Vibrating her body with your bloodied-sore
fingers
she is toned and cool and dances sideways
indifferently french swivelling on her
pivot
that oak cavity, empty belly-full of
harmonious grit.
You drag her home, she squeaks on her
wheels, and you,
you heart-creaking soak, splashy with
self-pitying demons;
all the way to Orleans you go.
who carries who? one has to ask –
your red sneakers, as they stumble up the
cobble?
or those inverted lion paws, this city,
this lion on its back, toying with you?
it would maul you if it could but the jaws
lie buried in history.
You tread from pad to pad, you and your red
sneakers
and your girl, bumping out of tune with
each ragged trip on the road.
She gave you her all and you, and you
yours,
you are happy to have bled on her steely
strands tonight
Who carries who? The patron, flaunting the
history there
on the walls in black and white as if he
cared a damn?
It is that which loves the sailor inside and
nothing else. Or
the songstress willowy before the
hippotomamus art and all the soulful carvers who
sculptured this emblem for you. Who carries
who? Saint rita or the tunnel light queen or the buddha’s thigh or the volcano
in your gut?
They come to hang their heads and drown,
all three incarnate, at the bar, they sit in their various incarnations tossing
a dime into some spirit or other.
Candelabras, checked pizza mats, the
thumping red sneaker on the old worn grey tiles, stamping out all the aches of
your desperate yesterdays
to be sure many more to come but who
carries who?
One has to ask again and again,
even after the revolution,
especially after the revolution…
the salon?
Or the yellow plastic fish nets.
© Rebecca Rennie 2006
