Sunday, July 18, 2010

Baltimore

(this is for a girl named Connie something; it was 1975 and I don't even remember what she looked like. Just the feeling remains.)



Peering through your Baltimore hair
your lips smack - snap like crabs
in briny pots. I hate your accent
which you say you do not have.

I also hate you in my thoughts
you move inside me along the beltway
like a stone in a hubcap.
I want you but this is too grisly

Like some gnarled dwarf candy striper
melting butt first in the back of an ambulance.
Stop talking in that voice! Your Dundalk salt lip
words confuse me

After tonight
I'm driving a Plymouth Duster
back to my college where talking
about playing lacrosse would just get you dead.

Okay check the mirror
for 2-way men
love me till
the windows bleed.


2 comments:

  1. is this new, from remembering her? or did you write it in 1975? Either way - i think i met that girl at my brother's wedding in Boston.
    Favorite part:
    Like some gnarled dwarf candy striper
    melting butt first in the back of an ambulance.
    so icky, so good.

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  2. Thanks - I wrote this in about 1990. It didn't start out being about this person but before I knew it, it was. I rewrote it a little recently. Like I said I have almost no recollection of the person, specifically, but I still remember the confusing emotions of the time. I should never have gone to the east coast.

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