by Parker Logan
after Dorothy Chan
Girl, you’re a slapdash shot
of tequila, aren’t ya, in your overalls
and cowboy boots. Don’t you know
this isn’t the place? I love the way
you run the edge of your nail across
the bottom of my lip, how you cut
your eyes to the crook of my neck,
like Carmilla with Laura under
the trees at her fathers estate–
all we’re is missing is some masks
and a pair of fangs, and we’d be cursed
to the crypts of our family graves.
Girl, you’re the steel hitch holding
down the train cars as we roll off
a Tampa track, the tourists ogling
over banked, scaly bodies, sugared
hush puppies, fried conch fritters,
and the lip puckering tartness
of a key lime pie so sweet,
I’m already over my allotment
of rag tag cracker cliches, even Florida
has to blush; I couldn’t forget her, though,
the first apple of my alligator eye,
but listen: it was back in Tallahassee
when I asked if Nic thought
I belonged to the streets, and without
blinking he said I reminded him of
a bench at Cascade Park,
permanently out in the wind
and the rain. I used to look for love
over the click of a pool cue and the chalk
on a rod, used find it under red wine
and pink lipstick with it’s hand
perched like it was about to squash a bug.
Oh, I found love and it spit me out
like a gulp of Mississippi River water
with a weeklong aftertaste,
and I laughed at Nic because
he was right, my line
of pretenders stretching the block,
and now you’re laughing, too; we’ve completely
missed our spot, and what’s it like
having a friend tell you a truth
you’ve been trying hard to ignore?
It’s like a hook in the mouth
of a fish yanked from the bottom
of a lake, ripped through the surface
and floundering on a dock
by the foot of the fisher, a bottle
of vegetable oil, and a Coleman grill,
and girl, you’re a salt lick on my palm
and I’m the lime to wash it down.
We’re a morning hangover and an afternoon
of chores, we’re a sunset of recovery
and a night of tongues as wet
as they come, so gut that sucker
and I’ll oil up the pan: I’ve found love
and you’ve caught us a meal.
Parker Logan is from Orlando, Florida and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His work has recently been featured in Barely South Review, HAD, and MEMEZINE’s The Slop Review. He works as a teen library tech in the East Baton Rouge Public Library. You can read more about him at parkerpoetry.org.