Antonia Sweet
The Last Time I Saw Elvis
I guess I need some full-body contact. I am dwelling in
a weeping dwelling in my crepe-paper skin marred
flawed dented bruised, quivering even at a standstill. Grandma,
you live on in my upper arms and in the broken blood vessels
of my cheeks. One hundred seventy pounds of
nonrompin stompin shitsack.
And somebody like him would never even look at
someone like me. He'd look at a girl with everything tight high
packed, well-oiled, smelling like sin, red red paint, bright
sculptured hair. Willing swooning trusting him like fuck.
Aaaaaaaahhh god, he would taste like something loose and gleeful
going down, something with a tinge of bitterness, with an easy
open laugh and some sweet weight. A man with an
unreliable eyebrow who'll let me wipe my greasy fingers on his
pants, who'll make my bones pull apart inside me, my retina detach.
Four a. m. Let me go down to Wal-Mart and get some
relief, walk around, get me something to stop this slidey
wail. Aaaaaaaahh, can't stand myself, can't hardly see, my heart
up all night choking and gasping. Fretful child, settle.
Freaking car knows the way in the late heavy damp.
Two cylinders firing, fucked-up wiring, tires bald as a bat. Why
all these buggies out? There must be eight thousand of
them! Can't even get in the lot. Hope it's open. Shoot, world's
second biggest Wal-Mart better be open 24-7. I'll just park on the
road and walk on in. Wreck my tennis shoes.
Hey, what's that? A sliver of wet silver from the side of
my eye and when I spin around quick a wall of buggies
stands there still and innocent, just the faint ting of clinking metal
on metal muffled by the fog.
"Let me pass."
Pressing up against my belly gently, wet grid marks.
Herding me somewhere, like they're excited little kids, little
yelps sneaking out, jostling, jingling.
Rip, something tore the last card for sound off at the
perforations, let it flutter to the ground. The fog gulped and
lifted up. Time was hanging out.
Bang, a spotlight illuminates something dropped into
the silent liquid sky, held up against a scrim of moldy velvet
for just a moment. A man.
Sashays, just a little flourish, turns his face away then
snaps it back around to me. Slow grin. The jewels on the
jumpsuit catching the hot light quite nicely and refracting through
the mesh of water.
My eyes.
His collar rolled up around his black-hole hair, his
parachute harness, his open arms: he likes the light. Not a
solid bone in my body.
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