Ruth Madievsky

From Issue 10

NESTING DOLLS

I’ve been waking with an empty net in my hands.
                                                                  I’ve been re-reading the Neruda poem  
                                                    about the rain taking off her clothes.
                         Tonight the moon is a surgical mask and the stars psych ward refugees.
                                                                                                         Somewhere in this zip code,
                                                               two teenagers are making a backseat holy,  
           their hips harmonizing with the radio, a gun in the glove compartment.
There is always a gun in the glove compartment,
                                        just as there will always be parties where I accept a ride home
                                                                                              from someone whose name
                                        I’ve spent the last two hours dragging through dirt.               Right now,
              you think I’m eating pasta with a friend who has a PhD and a dog  
                                                                              and doesn’t feel like a spare tire most of the time.
Really, I’m home, thinking about nesting dolls
                        and how all my life I’ve been a charley horse in the thigh of some god.
                                                             There’s this dream where my heart is a salted pretzel,
       which is better than the one where my body is a looted ship,
                                                                                                                    which isn’t a dream at all.
                                        I keep thinking we are in the temple of the apathetic ghost
       or picturing us on Plymouth Rock,  
                                                             where I am burying the flag of my finger
                        beneath the band of your jeans.                      Call me an armchair romantic.
Call me when you finish your old Cuban,
                                        when you leave the bar with the beautiful women on tap,
       so I can tell you I’ve decided not to be a broken window anymore.
                                                                                        It’s going to be all rapid-fire dick jokes
                        and YouTube videos of Celtic dance from here on out.
                                                 We’ll be a Labor Day barbeque.
I’ll be the watermelon  
                        and you can be the spoon.