Iris remembers her first time
She’s thinking back
to the pretty blonde girl’s brother
—then she was nearly twelve, I was ten,
the time we slipped away
far from the party’s crowded pool—
while she focuses on the lines
around her wide brown eyes,
lengthening her lashes,
rouging olive cheeks dark as lips,
glossing lips stoplight red
like melting plastic
under hot mirror lights,
but she wants this cruelty—
she’s so angry.
She wanted me to be there in the barn
though I was still scared of sex
because girls had exclamation marks
instead of dicks—
when this blond boy just wanted to,
she wanted me to watch
but I looked far away
as much as I could,
smelling the dry fields,
the dung, the bats, and her—
her hair’s tangled thicket
against her flimsy perfumed dress.
She focuses on her lines
holding an aluminum chair for balance
as each leg stretches
and turns out softly opening,
one extends straight back
through heel, ball, toe into pointe,
glides into a lift,
the strength-move
making her lycra string costume disappear—
but it’s hard as rope everywhere.
It looked like a deep
flower in the fields
but there was a mushroomy smell (his?)
and sounds like long kisses
with a wet sponge,
its depths so good
both of them groaned weird—
it’d blossomed like a mouth
and sour milk puffed out of him;
she laughed like
he’d told the funniest joke
and he nearly smacked her,
his blue eyes cold as sky.
She focuses on how to flow
under the thirsty lines-of-sight,
braces her queasy stomach,
clenches up her insides to go on
as if there were a reason to,
as if there were love
instead of cash
reaching up to pull her strings...
She’d still think of him
even when we played in the basement
where it smelled like laundry and dough—
And when she’s gone deeper into herself
she’s surprised by the mirror wall
where her hands, her arms spread
expressing so much yearning
(from invisible sister; published by Many Mountains Moving Press)
