There are days I go wandering
through bars looking for him, small
and Irish and drunk and laughing and
warm as amber. He escorts me on his arm
proving we mean something, pins me
to his filthy lapel, a foreign legion badge from
a culture once visited, deserted now for toothless
old men and women rough as splinters
underfoot. My feet stick to the breath of vomited
beer and my fingernails stick to the breath of strained
smoke and my heart
pries at the bottles
for him,
long lost from a ship plying Vietnamese
waters for drug-spliced lists describing some future
fist now in his face.
The old men drool at my name and their hands
describe my curves as one woman though they
must see two. Their rheumy eyes cling to my
neck, gagging me with the rags of their dry
fingers, probing my waist with their faulty
memories, though I pity.
I let them paw
for my cheap pity.
The women with missing front
teeth and fingers in brassy nicotine
gloves wink, laughing. We’re all on the same
sinking island, dribbling sand in our eyes to see
all the places it’s been
while he talks on about politics straighter than
I ever will, recalls survey line names I’ve long
forgotten, making me wish I was drunk Irish
and safe from my own:
something as easy as a wall
built of bottles.
I will walk home before dark
stinking of rape and cordite,
alone.
.
orphan poems 