Self-Portrait as Sex Addict Chained to a Rusty Heater

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_3/Martin.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

-After Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan

Miss Mayella says There ain’t no better cure
          for the blues than good pussy,
and I guess she’s half right, but I prefer men
when I elbow-crawl through Magnolias,
          crushed cigarette butts.

                    Just-shucked corn.

                    ~

It’s this awful itch, a hellfire born from
          my memories in heat.

                    ~

Lazarus claims God dropped me in his path,
          a bare naked angel,
                    some three-legged
basset hound shackled to his radiator.
          But I’m no doped up diva.
I’m not a bitch in need of neutering.

                    ~

The dog never wants to writhe across the grass.

                    ~

Still, when I spat in Laz’s face and said
               I hated him, it wasn’t true.
                    That man never asked
why I wasn’t smothered at birth. No raping
          me gently in puddles of booze.

                    ~

Swanky Southern love:
          a man who finally tongues my wounds.

                     ~

                    The best moonshine
               in all of backwoods Mississippi, and I swear,
he thinks I’m worth a song or two
                    in that drafty house,
               as the good lord reaches
calloused hands down to rob us of our skin.

                    Our drunk, hungry mouths.