localized to the legs
(a)cutest psoriatic oracle
like built in mood rings
sweet small scaleys
pink – red heart
shapes indicate
how pissed off
or stressed out
but its just
desserts
in reverse. raised, thick like braille
leaving pieces of me behind
wherever
I go . ..
in your sheets
and in the back
of your itchy brain
scatt er ed on your carpet
and you will love it.
You, my Drug Store Cowboy, work in dismal retail hawking all kinds of shit. From ‘Hair Mayonnaise’ to infant incontinence meds.
The first time, a slouchy Hello sent my eyes to catch yours. In the same moment, there was a voice from o’erhead shrieking Assistance to beauty please!
An angry lady in a wheelchair, feverishly avoiding her morph into a Velociraptor in the fluorescent light, interrupted your seismic stare. My heart melted when you came from behind the counter to adjust her oxygen tank so a wreath of plastic-filled plastic bags could balance like a sunflare around her chair.
I played a little hide and seek with the voice from above until I spied her behind the counter, arranging cheap perfume. She was a bonita babe with large hooped earrings and a Bump-it even-keeled with a baby bump. Like a vitamin deficient rare bird, I quietly observed her biting her empty nail pits. Then, you waltzed over to her and said in a faux-French accent, “Assistánce?”
“You ever heard of Olive Foil?
“You mean, Olive Oil?”
“Yeeuh, for stretch marks.”
“Sure, it’s used for all sorts of stuff..greasing a gun, home labor, cooking mostly.”
“So, like, you can eat it?”
I could see you squirm, so I came over for a price check on Hair Mayo.
$9.99, she said, then turned to you and asked if she could “eat this too?”
Narrowly escaping that vom-filled conversation, I prayed a self-checkout would be available for my “5 days sooner!” pregnancy test. God answered at least one of my prayers when you said “I can help you over here!”
“Would you care for CrackerJacks? 2 for 1..”
“No, but I wouldn’t mind the prize. Crack and a Jack & Coke, amiright?”
“Robitussin is on sale, the orange flavor..”
“Oh really? A true treat! Do you know if Hair Mayo can be used as an expectorant? Or is it for external use only?”
Medical assistance to the front register, please.
You always said Lovers should be lovers. I knew this was true, because I heard you say it in your sleep. Your sounds were high definition, like you were closer to God with a pipe in your praying hands. Your wheezing set flame to my foot. By the light of your computer screen, I rummaged your desk drawers like a vagabond to find your red inhaler. I was immediately concerned and desperately in love. My sleeping, wheezing angel had half empty canisters of dizzying depression stashed away in dusty corners. Your wheezing made sense. No use in hiding mine, now. I wrapped my lips around the nozzle and opened my heart to you. Our sins now in sync, I laid my head on the yellowy pillow next to your sleeping, talking head and listened. I listened to your somniloquy loud and clear like crystal meth.
I was almost a victim of an unfair Travis Country parking ticket. I was so excited to see your post on Craigslist looking for people to tell their stories, as I need this space to finally get it all out! Even if it is to a stranger like you. Because to be totally honest and anonymous, my sorority sisters would exile me if they knew about this indiscretion. The only other person who knows is God, so consider yourself in my trust tree.
It was sometime during March when I was downtown with my sisters. Like a gaggle of over-age Girl Scouts, we sang Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” gliding through troughs of 6th Street swine, nary a sober mind. I may or may not have been featured on Girls Gone Wild, but evidence proves this former America’s Funniest Home videos starlett had become less favorable to God (just this once, I swear!) But hey, that’s what college is all about, no?
Once I lost my lucky wig, I knew it was time to go home but I still couldn’t find my car. I mean, the keys were in my pussy the whole time. But my Volvo is too big. I knew I should have got the hatchback.
There was a serious moment of clarity somewhere between greasy pizza and a motorboat huddle. That car looks just like mine, Jesus fish and all.
But I didn’t have 3 parking tickets and a smashed back window when I left it there? The moment of clarity turned into a moment of hilarity, in quick succession was heavily drunken calamity. How will I get home now?! I called out to an unresponsive God. The shattered glass crackled around my numb, shoeless feet. I needed chapstick. Not lipgloss… chapstick.
Then, before I had a chance to hail the lone pedi-cab hipster, there was a rotund voice that bounced off the stone street and into my cochlear implant. “If you stick your key in that car, I’ll have to arrest you for drunk driving.”
Does that mean I’ll get to ride in your car? Shotgun! I stuttered, then realized this cop was seated dorsal on an animal. Not a horse. A Steed. This creature made Mr. Ed look like a seahorse.
Let’s just say, it was like giving an Indian sunburn to a whale.
Officer – no shit- Jimmy Dean rolled all 3 of my parking tickets into joints and smoked each one of them as we trotted off sidesaddle into the sunrise- marking my 3rd day in the same set of false lashes and the day I beat the tickets off. The following week can be archived under SXSW SXS[rest].
