Getting up on the Wrong Side of the Dead
by M

Even death couldn’t keep you

from the Smoke N Head, returning after six years,

a carton of Triumph in a brown bag.

You are not the night we dressed to scare

that first Halloween in Eagle. I wore a bile-

colored gown I’d struggled over

under the lackadaisical eye

of Mrs. Litterelle’s home ec class

for a prom Jimmy Middelmas’ rolled cigarette

sleeve neglected to attend. My hair

was teased so much it should have been

embarrassed. You had black shoe polish

like sewer grates circling your eyes

and an executioner’s hood threatening

their vision. You were growl and grumble.

They’d turn liquid and drop

their candy pillowcase sacks. Run,

boy, run! You’d grab the bags and go

after them to return the booty, start them

in that ugly cry, little faces

puckered like dried apple people.

I followed the laugh like the stock

green witch they watched in horror

flicks, a fright wig trailing her rabid

raccoon familiar. I only made it worse.

That’s the look I’d trust, but you don’t

look. You feel behind me, knees drawn

in the cleft of mine, left arm a velvet

rope across my waist, holding me

back from all that lives

under the bed. Your hand cools

my nipple in the unremarkable

way you palmed water from a trout stream

on the ranch, bringing its honor

to your mouth. The way we’d slept solid

for sixteen years. Coccyx sounds erotic,

riding a triangle of good

intentions to the base

of a spine. I don’t want to look

at the familiar or turn a corner

of the spread, you becoming fluid seeping

through a pillowcase. A letting go

of candy buttons on paper tapes,

the fright who sends you

back to the black. That dried apple

ugly cry. Didn’t I always make it worse.

M has served as an Associate Poetry Editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection (http://sundress.net/stirring/) for the past one hundred years or so. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals—ThePedestal Magazine, Word Riot, three candles, 3rd Muse Poetry Journal, New World Review, Eclectica Magazine, The Rose & Thorn, and others. She also serves as an Administrator of the online poetry workshop, Wild Poetry Forum. Her current chapbook manuscript is wandering through post offices everywhere in search of a publisher. In the few seconds a month when she is not working on these projects, she reads mostly novels, walks along Portland’s bustling city streets with her man, and is grateful for the enormous amount of love in her life.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com