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| Poems Laurie Halbritter |
| Gaye Fingers Basically oral with genital tendencies reads the ad placed by no one in particular. Looking for that special nobody. Not into cuddling. Don't tell me about crystals and don't say no to games. Not because of any particular disagreement or lack of one but everyone always agrees anyway and we've all seen the terms before if not in a sallow ad then on a paper napkin or on the back steps of the bar whispered on a first-name-only basis. It's all so clogged with meaning, these words plump and spent as cigarette butts in a sad ash tray at the Aut Bar. It's a very slow Monday evening here, and believe it or not, a woman named Gaye is coming from Washington, I believe to fuck me in the ass. She says west coast women love it, buys me a Corona, asks for my number. Sizing up her digits, I gladly give it to her. She has designer glasses, big hair, a Mercedes. Her money is a deterrent but only a very small one. It's her big fingers that interest me, which is why I sit here tonight, waiting. I order another Corona, imagining her finger in the mouthpiece. Not everyone knows but my name was recently changed to Corona not because of Gaye but because I refused to be Cremona an Italian woman with billowing breasts on a postcard and that wasn't her real name either. The phone rings and it isn't Gaye. The phone rings and it isn't mine. A cow ambles across the side- walk and I take it for granted even though this is a small city, Ann Arbor, Kerrytown. This is the Midwest and we feel this way about cows, about automobiles, about corn and about the civil but distant way we greet each other. But what about fingers? Chicken fingers, walkin' fingers, pickin' fingers and fingers that add up to less than ten? Fingers in light sockets are not encouraged but fingers rivet up noses in broad daylight in nearly every Detroit-made automobile. It is all so commonplace here. We accept it the way we accept farting uncles on holidays. But then there's the sticky problem of Gaye fingers. Where are they? Can we find them? How should we feel about them? Is there a recipe for making them? Gaye fingers. How to locate them. They've disappeared somewhere. The phone is ringing someplace far away and no one is picking up. A new line appears in an ad. We can't see the fingers but we can feel them. We know they're there. Detroit Apartment Water moccasin in the toilet Cat babies clawing at the walls of wombs of some yet to be de- termined species If I had a hammer I'd quiet them real fast The woman downstairs is talking loudly to the neighbor saying we got a whalin' baby upstairs The greasy smell from her kitchen makes me want to invite myself over She doesn't like me I abuse children but only small furry ones Especially if they're in heat No these aren't my cute animal slippers the cat keeps jerking off on my feet and I can't get her off If it's not a water moccasin it's cockroaches everywhere Landlord says they come free with the apart- ment Says everybody in Detroit's got 'em Recommends Landlord Formula Gives us a free gallon It kills the plants and the cat but not the roaches The neighbor thinks we killed the baby Our slum lady tells us her workers won't finish the work on our floors because they say I'm possessed Really I'm just gay Christ I made the fuckers sandwiches They give ten percent of their five dollars to god and I give fifty percent of mine to the slum goddess of Indian Village And our floors are sticky and half-stripped and bugs are crawling everywhere Vicky is lying on the mattress crying today and I feel responsible I feel like maybe I should make her a cup of tea or apologize for picking this place, this city and this life we are living Tea is easy so I heat some water I hear something splash in the bathroom so I grab the broom and a large barbecue fork As I edge towards the bathroom I hear the water hiss and boil over Movie Night Two Two girls on the floor cuddle while a boyfriend, bored, annoyed or excited slumps next to them. An ass wriggles across the floor and two people hope its for them. It sounds disembodied, like some- thing William Burroughs, but there is an actual person attached. One of the wishful people is too nervous to respond verbally or otherwise. That person happens to be me, although, to be honest, I feel more like a character in a movie than a real person. I prefer thinking about asses to live con- frontation. I wouldn't know what to do with a real one. Someone clicks on the VCR and the wriggling subsides. And in no time at all, sex seems almost safe in the theater of Julie's living room, amongst chips, condiments and the bright blue light of the television. I like distance. On the screen, a man dressed as a woman rides across the desert on top of a bus with a long, iridescent garment trailing behind him. Some- one wants to know why he's a transvestite. The answer, of course, is why are you not? But no one much cares because they're having a good time and its just a TV. A woman in a bar has a remarkable ability to shoot ping pong balls out of an uncertain location below her waist into a fearful and amazed audience. We are safe from the line of fire because we are congregated outside of the TV set. And I am both excited and relieved and while it seems like a really miraculous feat, no one bothers to ask why, or how or where. Flashback 1993: The Queen of the Secretaries with her bouffant hair and mousy nose pins me to a gray speckled chair at the end of a very long dark table. Her rodent finger jabs my shoulder. You never wanted to be a secretary did you???? She's really angry. I feel guilty. Eyes on the floor. Pick at the seat of my itchy wool skirt. Searching my mind for a certain memory. An explanation. Baseball. Superheroes. Motorcycles. Nothing. I stand accused. I rise and clear the table of the doctors' lunch crap. Wipe off the coffee with a rag. And wipe and wipe and wipe. She watches, arms folded. Okay, I'll go to the Tupperware party, I say finally. And I leave the room and disappear into my cube. Where Have All the Eyebrows Gone and eyebrows were unwanted pubic hair on the face mona didn't want 'em virgin Mary didn't need 'em leonardo discouraged 'em sex face don't got a space in renaissance times so bring your gillettes to the sets where davinci makes your bald self immortal why didn't we wonder at the shaved faced italian girls before they all looked so benign northern maybe no dark beauties and they were shavin' somethin' who knows what all don't ask don't tell look another pretty face bald ones all over the place |
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