Jagged with Love

Expiation

6 EXPIaTIon For those who follow me cozily out the door, for the one so close in line last night I felt his hard-on, the ones who say hello, looking at the breasts, how areyou, the puffy-lipped polo shirt wearers who discuss my classes on days my skirts are thigh-high and my legs must be making a sound only they can hear, for those who say God is not even one-quarter She, for the pokes at ribs and claps on the ass given with a smile, the knuckles against the neck when I'm pulling at the doorhandle, the heavy beerish pocket ofa mouth, the pinches while askingwhat my shirt says, sweet thang, for the white vans whose drivers honk honkhonk, the doorbells I cannot answer because it could or could not or could or could not be just Jehovah's Witness men, the poorly lit parkinglots reminding me they found drops ofTrisha's urine behind the swimming pool but never found Trisha, for the hot damns pelted out rolled-down windows, the Spanish they don't think I understand one aisle over, the middle-aged men pushing their children in carts and taking full bodied looks in the frozen food section, the trucker on 1-65, the condom on his fingers pointing at me, for the dialogue of cottage cheese thighs, the raw popping laughs when virgins walk by or butch girls or acned girls or flat girls, the jokes about bumpy nipples packed-tuna pussy the ugliest fucks you'd ever seen can't buh lieve they lettem live that ugly, for them you do a service, quiet-hearted man, your fingers on my forehead, your face like rain, landing anywhere, something clean ofyour eyes whenyou sayfair one, when you listen to me, and for themyou oil the humbling of age, you redeem mankind, you hold out the pearl you found inyour chest, the one each man has, and it speaks to the softest, scaredest part of me, the part naked and artless as a woman's open body, for all ofthem you make me think I could unravel into the imperfect, the sweat, the gingered cadence of humanity with one ofyou. 7 ...