My Tongue Is Too Thick To Type Them All Down
1. I thought he was my soul mate because we had the same wicked sense of humor and were a couple of guilt free anarchists before we knew what “anarchy” was. It didn’t matter that we were related until I was eight, and then I felt icky about it and quickly withdrew.
2. He gave me my first delicious tingle down there at fifteen with his son of the youth minister cocksure Leo swagger telling me, “I thought you were yelling rape, and I was coming up to get my share.” My first taste of audacity, and I was a believer.
3. Still a tongue tied virgin at seventeen he was far from my physical ideal but he sniffed me out and snatched me up, and I was grateful because I was goddamn sick and tired of being invisible and I knew we were soul mates because when we were sitting on my grandmother’s couch I pulled an ace of hearts card out of my wallet, told him I kept it in there for good luck, and he said, “Hand me my wallet,” and I did and he pulled out an ace of hearts of his own. On the basis of this and his Obsession cologne and leather jacket and love of Vanilla Ice and his motorcycle throbbing between my legs I sent him love letters for the better part of a decade.
4. Oh gawd. I don’t want to mention the poet from Wisconsin who turned me onto Bob Dylan and told me he was too scared to call me on the phone because he knew he would fall in love and he didn’t want to.
5. The sex certainly left a few stains on my pillow and the love letters were legendary but we never waltzed across Texas, exactly, and I was scared of the lurking tornadoes in Oklahoma and anyway he was cold android to my hot tamale.
6. Too much too soon which was what I was in the market for after a sad series of Yahoo personals one night stands but he was too New York and I was too Texas and all the idle snap shot consumption of the states in between could not reconcile our lost in translation post card banter.
I wish it were as simple as a Rod Stewart song
I wish “Sesame Street” and Vacation Bible School
had prepared me
for this reality
for every John and Yoko
there’s a Bob and Liz
I’ve never
heard of
them either
but they’re probably celebrating
their golden
tomorrow
___________________________________________________________
Dear John
dear daddy dear jesus dear buddha dear john
what. is. the. trick.
I am seeking communion fruitlessly.
I am looking for higher ground.
I know there is a hurricane coming on.
I’m out of candles.
The windows are not proofed.
My boots are not big enough
to wade out the murk.
I crawl cockroach like
for easy answers.
In the black and white pictures
Marie Crenshaw speaks common sense
and dignity.
I remember her recliner sermons.
How she preached it
cigarette in one hand
can of Coors in the other.
How she lived it
fixing whatever was broken
herself
making a beautiful garden
not asking for anything ridiculous
and out
of reach.
What I’m really after
is not an easy transitory fuck
or a fan club
but a world of my own
bright and maintained.
I’m goddamn sick and tired
of these smelly spills.
I’m tired of smelling
like myself…
a woman
madly in love
with the
festering world.
_________________________________________________________
BIO: Misti Rainwater-Lites has chapbooks available from Scintillating Publications, Kendra Steiner Editions, Erbacce Press and Deadbeat Press. Misti is a mom and wife, amateur photographer and an aspiring novelist.
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