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I Went Home Last Night With Stella |
We'll take my car,
she said, it'll be all right.
We walked across the common
to the underground park
hand in hand, (hadn't done that in awhile)
oblivious to the muggers
snaking from tree to pole...
...and then forty-five minutes later
we pulled into a yard
that housed a large black and tan dog
caught yellow-eyed
in the beam of the headlights,
and tied to a weight that I just knew
he could drag if he were willing;
and he didn't bark,
he stared,
and it was plain to me
he was schizoid.
That's Herbie, was all she said.
Later,
caught in the wonderful complexities
of limbs and mouths--
with the colors simply brilliant--
we heard from the open window:
bangbang!
bang! bang! bang!
Stella rolled to the floor
with a practiced movement,
slicing at the lamp on the way down,
dragging me along with her.
Naked, and in the dark on the cool summer floor,
we heard two bursts of automatic fire:
rat tat tat tat-rat tat tat tat!
What the hell--?
Shhhhhhh, she said softly in my ear,
and then, astonishing me, bit it.
Yeah, well...what the hell, I whispered...
...much later, while drinking coffee
and reading about the shoot-out in Charlestown,
Juicy, the day bartender, said to me,
Stella lives down there.
She oughta move from that part of town.
Yeah, I said,
mentally rearranging my apartment.
(This poem first appeared in the print Anthology From Porn to Poetry)
copyright 2004
Pasquale
Capacosa |
