by Dennis Mahagin
(08/09/06)
Timeless Alabaster
Hottie -- straddling the lapis
lazuli stone corona library
cornice on the corner of
10th and Yamhill in
downtown Portland,
with my vigilance long since
clocked out she lets her stern
Aussie Girl potty mouth pout
through static castanet chatter
in the manner of a spurned mama
squirrel in brightly-blooming birch
tree, with topaz strobe lights where
her irises should be.
She looks down at me,
and clucks the ridges of her
heart throb palette, with hot pink
tongue makes a slither-twitter
sound like Sir
Anthony Hopkins sucking
down Chianti and Fava beans.
"If I've done you any
wrong, Mistress," I plead,
please allow me now,
to make amends."
"The flaw in your vision," she begins,
"concerns randy Kennedy twins coming hard
at century's turn with rose-red rug burns on
a whole skin, lacing your turgid quatrains
with ropes, thongs and anagrams,
but the Scrabble Lynchpin
required to win me over is an
eleven-letter antonym for
the word limn,
referring to those
voyeur gasps Mother Earth
makes when the ever-loving fault
line breaks, and I take you again -- and
again and again, my Captain!"
"Can you use this strange
word in a sentence, then?"
"How about,
lay down in the tall grass, with Old
Navy strangling your ankles, and let Mama
spank that tingly Prophetic Ass one
more nasty time?"
We shortly retired
to a tight wrought
iron alcove adjacent
to Alder Street,
time spills
like sweat drops
from stiff nipples
while we took
our Time, we took
our fill -- and eons
later I see myself
still utterly unable
to get Naomi
out of my mind.
The Poet's Companion - by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux