She pushed gently against me
and fell on the
bed
Stretched a leg towards me
began unbuttoning at her
jeans
I helped her take them
off
Not too gentle, not too rough
Grinning, she turned around
in bed and said, “I just
remembered, you never told me
what your muse looks like.”
“Huh?”
“And please don’t tell me
it looks like me. We both know
that’s bullshit sweet talk poets use
to get girls. Don’t
lie to me, boy. What does your
muse look like? You
can tell me.”
I reached for her foot
moved it out of the way
not too gently, not too rough
Reached for the panties
She pushed my hand away
not too gently, not too rough
“Tell me. Is it, by any chance, a little
girl locked inside a basement like
it was for my ex-boyfriend? Do you
whip her when she’s naughty
and doesn’t give you inspiration? Do
you deny her food and the
bathroom?”
“What?”
“Tell me, poet! Do you? Do you
lie on your back when you masturbate
and imagine the muse
squat above your face
and shower you with her piss
as blessing?”
I took a step back. “What?”
“Oh fuck,” she said. “Just tell
me already what your muse
looks like and how d’you get
intimate with her. Tell me!”
“I, I don’t know. I don’t work
like that.”
She stopped touching herself
Watched me expecting
to add more
I gave a shrug.
Honestly, the last time I thought of
a muse it was
some broke, homeless young guy,
scrawny as a putrid
plank and roaming the streets
He had nothing in this
world
but hunger
A hunger that possessed him
and made him write like a madman
That guy was my muse
But I figured
she wouldn’t care to hear about that
Anyway, we didn’t go out for long
after that evening
She said we’re not compatible
because I’m too vanilla
Unfortunately though
being a good boxer doesn’t
earn you a good job
in today’s society. Best he
could do was bouncer
at a local bar
His IQ wasn’t much help either
He beat up quite a number of
troublemakers
and earned a reputation
became a local celebrity
The women desired him
and got him
and life was good until the one
invincible opponent stepped
into the ring
Well, there are many invincible
opponents in a man’s life
but his was prostate cancer
All the women who wanted to
take pictures with him
and have his autograph on their
chests and wanted to take
him home meant nothing now
One of them was a rich
older lady who
gifted him a car after he served
her a few times in the bedroom
He used it to
drive at full speed into
a pole
And as it happens after someone
dies, the people had only
good words to say
about him
They thought he didn’t leave
much behind
but one of the girls he’d been
with knew better
She rubbed her swollen
belly as she
thought of him. It’ll be fine
as long as her husband wouldn’t
suspect anything
Goddammit, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places
he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober
and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines
he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient
forgot what the company of a woman felt like
forgot what love was
he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it
"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine
and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"
"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a pussy."
They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them
Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden
Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on
Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper
Shit,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political shit on the
front page
Nobody gave a damn about that article
The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM
That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet
We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino
she woke up because her feet were cold
The window was open
and she had not the audacity to
stand and shut it in someone else’s house
He was still asleep
beside her
The sheets were stained with her maiden’s
blood
That was all right
She was twenty
But him.... He was also twenty but that’s not the point
This was the boy who
put her through hell during both middle
and high school
The bully
There was that time when he pushed
her down the stairs
and broke her thumb
that time during the field trip
when he threw a rock
straight into the side of her head
that time when he put
a frog in her
lunchbox
And another in her backpack that she
carried home
That time he kicked the ball
in her face giving her
a bloody nose
that time when he threw a snowball
at her ear
And there was another incident
resulting in a chipped tooth
and all of that was besides the
name-calling and the random hair pulling
and the tripping and the scaring
and all...
Yet now here she was
Here they were
In his house
In his bed
And all because he contacted her the previous day
and apologized for everything. Truth
is her life placed some nasty miles both
behind and ahead of her
and someone being nice all of a sudden...
It was so easy to get her
And what did he think of her now?
She felt tears trickling down
her cheeks as she thought of this and
stared at his sleeping body beside her
Daydreaming as a profession 