Lucinda Watson
I feel lust when It should be dust
I feel lust when I should feel like dust,
too much testosterone according to my
Geriatrician. I can’t help myself.
Fireman make my mouth water.
I put on rubber gloves,
a mask, a lab coat, and go to Brice’s house for
a drink last Friday
(we’ve been slow dancing electronically).
Like all women I want to talk
before sex and be a little drunk and be
kissed with intention to
paralyze but only for seven minutes or I get
Jittery.
I just decide I am ready to tell him because
now I am bored with this dance after 50 years,
too many partners to remember identifying marks
or howls.
Listen, I say, here’s what I want.
I look at him in his old Patagonia, ripped at the hem and spotted,
hair half brown half gray stuffed under a Patriots cap,
face unshaven, nylon turtleneck blued into gray, open mouth
revealing years of ground out rage and he’s thinking,
What the hell now? So I
say I want to have dinner with someone every night.
I want a body in the bed next to me that doesn’t move or make sounds.
I want someone to have my back.
I want you to figure out what we are going to do about dinner.
I want the smell of soap and skin and silk and the feel of hips and maybe
a gun in the house,
a stick shift car and a big dog, Trivial Pursuit 80’s version,
I want you to figure out what I want and then give it to me when I want it not when you do and I want chocolate pie.
And then he says I don’t want to have dinner every night
The Stone Creek Motel
You always think you’re going home and then you find yourself
at the only roadside motel that takes dogs on a Sunday
night in Missoula having stopped at the liquor store to buy a
bottle of wine and some Pringles.
Out the window of room 208 you can see the inconsistent
glint of interstate 90 heading east and you understand
why you always wanted to be a trucker.
In a minute you are in your truck cab hustling down that Highway,
your fur ball dangling from the rear view mirror wearing tight jeans and
someone’s T-shirt headed for that lineman in Wichita County slamming
the gearshift up and down and checking your Colt 45 under your seat at rest stops.
Or you could take the job listed on the board in the lobby of the
Stone Creek Motel -
“Deer Cleaner” “Twelve bucks for the Bucks!” “Seasonal Work”
Get yourself a rubber apron and a sharp knife and go to town.
You always want other people’s jobs.
The night goes on and you feel comforted by your new
friends, Marge and Tiny, her Great Dane, as you settle
down in the lobby in the brand spanking new chairs,
setting up your Pizza Hut box and six pack of wine alongside
Marge and Tiny with their feast of Wendy’s double burgers,
fries and washed down with Zapple.
Marge asks where you are from and for a moment you have
no answer but she forgets to wait and tells you about her
granddaughter in Des Moines and what she’s bringing her.
Marge is nice enough.
She is wearing the last pair of pink
polyester pants on earth. At some time
there was a daisy chain down the side of each pant leg but
some have fallen off into the vastness of Marge’s yesterday’s.
You could be anywhere.
You could step into Marge’s life in a second.
Take Tiny out and shovel shit for days.
Marge knows what she’s going to do tomorrow
and you have no idea.
