i.
A busload of virgins, a motor coach
bursting at the sweating
seams of its vinyl seats with thirstier
versions of their former
Selves, raven-tressed and resourceful co-eds,
those freer spirits not
yet chained by suburban conservatism,
exam-stressed college girls
dressed like magicians’ assistants, mini-
ii.
dresses and Mod minimalism aching
for the distant Sixties,
anachronistic Hipsters ravenous
and reminiscent, slick
nostalgic temptresses whispering in
your ear with silent glares
gracefully licking from unblemished lips
insidious grins, hips
working their wicked way in as you stop
iii.
and stare, redefining “getting off” as
they somehow find a way
inside your mind, sauntering akimbo
from behind cursive hearts
fingered onto frosted windows, ‘you smell
like a church,’ you barely
muster, mourning courage as one wanders
over without warning,
‘after all the candles have been blown out—’
iv.
‘…and the incense still lingers, a chorus
of silence singing soft
vespers with intoxicating clouds of
white smoke?’ she answers with
another question, as if voiced not by
heaven but some echo
from farther below, tension tempering
the interaction as
she delights in sensing how sensitive
v.
you are to physical attraction, her
innocence shouting with
a peppermint- and patchouli-scented
pout, venomous, fatal,
and palpable as she mouths quips your thoughts
gloss over as your head
pictures her lips on your dick, ‘but I don’t
go, not anymore; I
mean, I did, when I was just a kid, but
vi.
now I hang out here, life’s too short for prayers—’
‘…until you disappear’
she winks, her beauty at once antique and
antic, as overt in
her majesty and aristocratic
penury as she was
in her temerity, and is in my
memory, explicit
and complicit, a crime exhibiting
vii.
no reticence at any mention of
my bruises or damage,
no illusions of empathy or true
repulsion at the sight
of my insecurity’s wound oozing
atrocity, awkward
as an artist drowning in his own shame’s
watered-down talent, pain
apprenticed to an absent master, an
viii.
inexperienced bastard commissioned
by fate to paint for fame
an Annunciation, but ending up
instead tagging a more
urban(e) Adoration, a juvenile
vandal making of him-
self a deranged spectacle of ruthless
humiliation, this
one whose pluck and verve serve to single her
ix.
out from among them, this exemplar of
The Other, of tacit
desire, sister-daughter-mother, she’s no
amateur, a real-world
enchantress bewitching her coven and
the dumb men they make love
conquer, when Alexis Kinkaid came to
pay for filling her tank
and ended up setting my soul aflame,
x.
a field trip’s pit-stop never letting me
rest since that day, flooding
my dreams and my sheets with scenes too obscene
for a lowly station
attendant to repeat, not when, in her
boldness, she showed me things
making neon’s perpetual promise
of “HOT GIRLS” seem coldest,
immodesty’s midnight forest of bored
xi.
perversions less sordid, what she took off
with more than I wanted
to give, this vague vanishing act of hers
a stunt all guys wish made
our lies worth such performance, never since
have I figured it out,
how this chick, treating me to a taste of
my own shtick, turned me from
a seasoned player into a cheap trick.
