What Rough Beast | Poem for July 18, 2017

Carla Drysdale
Dream as Reliquary

His name was 10100 and he drove
Like a rock star over bulldozed cement

Shards, statuary and steep steps
Until we got to the edge

Between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
He made a pit stop, got out of the car,

Laid back against stone,
Unzipped and she sucked him.

He was young and had smooth skin.
He asked where I was going. I said Brooklyn.

We drove on sidewalks in his Lincoln
Continental to the stadium

Where I was going to have him
Let him have his way with me

People were there. He said it appears
I have a gig. He said you write poetry?

Fiction I can read
With tea and sympathy?

He said he was from Ottawa and I said
I was born in London, Ontario.

Surprise Canadians. He left me there
While he went to talk with his manager.

I wrote everything in Siri scrawl
The color of public memorials.

 

Carla Drysdale is the author of the poetry collections Little Venus (Tightrope Books, 2009) and Inheritance (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Spiraling, Public Pool, Cleaver Magazine, PRISM International, The Same, LIT, Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, Global City Review, and Literary Mama, among other journals, and in the anthology Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo. In May, 2014 she was awarded PRISM’s annual Earle Birney poetry prize for her poem, “Inheritance.” Born in London, Ontario, she lives with her husband and two sons in Ornex, France. To learn more, visit www.carladrysdale.com.

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