LAMENT FOR A FRAT BOY

He liked baseball and porn,
favored Girls Gone Wild and the Mets, liked me
to watch him pee while he sang Love Hurts
by Nazareth. His favorite color was a blue
Camaro, rain-rusted and troublesome.
I don’t remember his name,
just his breath: Jameson’s and a sweet candy
tongue. Oh, you are bad, bad, he said
as I memorized the Greek letters
of his smile, slipping his arm through mine
as we left the party two strangers.
I called him Cowboy, El Nino, Frankie
and Pickpocket. We stopped by a payphone
where he dialed Dave Matthews,
said I never got that song
the one about the ants.
Animals made him sad.
I said: I want to hold you down
and call you my monkey, want you
in red lipstick, want you to be a boy again,
tell me you’re a boy, now come and kiss
my toe'” His house smelled like beer
and chicken. I asked about the videos,
his frat brother said show her,
and I said, Art has always been underage girls
in Cancun going down on each other,
inserting lollipops in their cha-chas.
Now take me to your room,
you are beautiful'” he and his canopy
of half-naked girls. He pointed his girlfriend
of sixteen. She wanted to be a nurse, she had
her license, she visited on the weekends
if she didn’t have a test on Monday.
Sometimes he was sad, too drunk
and confessional, made me undress him
while he cried and whispered
about being so vulnerable right now.
He’d say stuff like where am I going and
you seem like you got it figured out.
Then we’d make out and I’d rub
his special spot,
his bald spot'” He’d plea, let me inside,
and I’d imagine his girlfriend’s window,
her father snoring in a recliner
on the first floor, her mother was dead.
He’d climb up her hair, it was as long
as Rapunzel’s, she’d flash her pom-poms
and he’d oooey-gooey right then
on her sweater. He was bad with his hands,
could never un-do the bra, but once
got an A in woodshop, liked the feel
of an axe. He dreamed women’s torsos
in wood, handling his chisels
and breasts like an arcade controller.
He said something about fantasy
made him feel real'” the odyssey
of his feeble mind: I poked my fingers through,
bent him across my knee. I said, call me
your mother, tell me you hate me,
bite at my thigh'” He could cry on cue.
I remember how my blue jean boy yelped,
white ass in my palm, the moon aglow.
He balanced himself right there on my lap,
liked me to play him like a keyboard.
How his back flinched for each smack'”
He said I was the best,
always asked for a cuddle. You should’ve heard
how he moaned a little in the morning:
the pain a pink, misshapen ink blot.

DRUNK SESTINA FOR EDDIE MONEY c. 1984

Eddie, let me take off your keytar
and polish your gun, watch you make love
to the front row like your daddy
did your mama, in his police car
you drove out west, sweating nights
next to microphones and girls.

Tell me there are no other girls
who take you home tonight,
whose legs spread on the hood of your car
and itch for Quaaludes and daddies
who taught well the love
between man and keytar.

Strap me on like your keytar
because I think I’m in love
and want to call you Daddy
when you pull up in your car
from a show, and I’ve been up all night
dreaming the lips of backstage girls,

the no-bra, big-hair girls
who’ve been rabid all night
to get fucked in their parent’s cars
and make curfew because Daddy
is the only man they say they love
and swear to save themselves for keytars.

So don’t just play me like your keytar
or say this song’s about true love
because this little baby needs her daddy
not some drunk who crashes cars
and lives, wakes me up at night
wearing the lipstick of other girls

swearing I’m the only girl
who can lick your sweat in the tour bus at night,
or hang out the window of your car,
because you’re ready to be a daddy
and this is really love
the way you felt towards your first keytar'”

It was a gift from your Daddy
who knew something about girls,
the things men tell them in the middle of the night.

LIFETIME MOVIES

Never did I make love to my principal
in the basement of my mother’s house
or elope with her ex-husband, a convict

whose baby I decide to raise anyway.
Never have I knifed a girl and coerced
her boyfriend to the prom, threatened his life

in the passenger seat of a homely Camry
where I am unpopular with bad hair
and all I want is a slow dance

with the quarterback
under construction paper stars
and dream this moment will not end,

that those are his hands
on my shoulders, not the hands
of the sheriff'”my father'”

tearing me away in handcuffs.
Let me be the Tori Spelling of my own life,
faking sick at the office party,

lover of cleavage and too much wine,
dodger of appointments
and phone calls, eater

of the last slice of pie.
Evil victories all'”
propelling me

into the mythical soap opera
of the day-to-day
where the heroes and villains

are too often myself
and I never know which one
is behind the wheel, stalling

and which one pushes me forward.

LAMENT FOR THE KING

Ghastly muttonchops
severed pretty hearts, vitals

hand-picked and almost legal,
backlit in a doorframe

of a hotel room, your lips
quivering from pills,

a horoscope ripped
from the daily paper

by the bedside table.
From Graceland to Vegas,

pussy galore: cities pinpointed
by wanna-be brides,

their doe-eyes hooked
on swinging crotches, and years later

your death’s smudged print
beneath the painted nails

of torn housewives
and how could it be:

that night post-show,
sequins aside.

And what of age, your kind belly
purring over pants?

Some declared you dead
even then.

Some say you never died:
snapshots at oil tanks,

your reflection in windows
of no name towns: Tupelo cries.

I wish I had been one
of your girls, seventeen,

swaggering from the kitchen
in your studded silk bolero

with your peanut butter
and banana sandwich,

my hair teased, my nipples
pinched pink,

crying I love you, I love you
let me shoot the TV for you.