A Last One for Richie
by Lauren Sartor
While you drove your date home
safe and unused,
I waited for you
in a cream-colored slip
keeping time
with a scented flame.
When you finally came,
you placed down a bag
of carefully measured drugs
as if you were preparing
for a parking spot.
You’ve always be so meticulous,
never leaving a sock caught in my quilt
or a piece of jewelry forgotten
by the alarm clock.
You must think it’s funny –
turning the cunt awkward
and disappearing soon afterward
leaving behind only
a few specks of soreness
and the casual
interruption
of self-esteem.
Shit
Life is full of anuses,
and cigarette butts.
It’s full of dicks
with no names, vaginas
with anuses. Everything
constantly needs cleaning,
(especially anuses).
Sheets need to be washed
between lays, old beer cans
dumped out and recycled.
The floor is sticky
and the refrigerator
smells like anuses.
Bed is a place to dream,
masturbate and fart.
There are blood stains
on each pillowcase.
The first cigarette
calls the bowls into motion.
Ashes drop on my thighs,
my anus clenches
and lets go. The first
inventory comes
from inside. It drops
past a halo of piss,
stains the porcelain.
Every day I check
to see whether
the turds are small
and tight or loose
like a scrambled
mind. My anus is a
mouth, the excretions,
the tongue escaping.
Almost
“I’m never so happy
as I was in East
Seneca Street,” he said
to nobody.
He his fingers moved
disjointedly, he stuttered
and was there all day.
It was almost
enough. It almost
made me
leave.
The poorest bars
are always richest,
where nobody drink
shelf.
Where do women go
when they’ve drunk clean
the well of youth?
I can’t tell you
yet. The man kept
on talking
to nobody and
sitting next
to me.
It was disgusting
as if he were violating
a social contract.
It was
almost enough
to make me leave,
to make me
tell him
To shut up, to throw
my drink
in his jaundiced face,
to get up
and find
what happiness
could be housed
on East Seneca.
BIO
Lauren Sartor has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in publications, such as Black Fox Literary Review, Broad! Magazine, Calyx Journal, Literary Juice, Easy Street, and The Former People’s Journal. Her work takes an earnest look at the conflicted, and often misrepresented, facets of ordinary livelihood. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at SUNY Binghamton.