First Date as Fantasy of Self-Invention
He’s crass I think when he’s on his fifth
Jack and Coke and I pretend
to forget that 2 hours earlier I joked
that my life goal was to see all the porn
on the internet. Crass, blue
collar thrusting as he demonstrates how his baby
mama mama’ed his baby. It’s all a bit
Jerry Springer, no, Maury Povich and it’s too close
to home: the mechanisms of
manufacturing and the seeds
that took root too many
miles from where they were sown, the farmers
who left their crops
for futures, the plowing
I’ve had to do and I can’t be this Indiana
when I’m dying to be so
Washington Oregon le Cote d’Azur
I kiss him anyway expecting tired
ashes, but instead he’s tender and
salted and I imagine him
a wave come to uproot
me, wash me closer to the sea.
KRISTA COX is a paralegal, an associate poetry editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Program Director of Lit Literary Collective, a nonprofit serving her local literary community. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, The Humanist, and elsewhere. Her web home is http://www.kristacox.me.
Twyckenham Notes 