CitySights
Rachel McKibbens
There was a salad. Chicken Caesar.
The dressing was too sour, but it was 12 a.m.
in New York City and I knew Id die if I ate more pizza.
My lover didnt care about the eating. As I chewed,
he became excited with a memory, told me how,
earlier, hed seen a bloody torso beneath a bus:
Oh, yeah, I saw a body torn in half today!
Im serious! It was pinned beneath the tires.
Ive never seen that much blood in all my life.
It ran a thick stream down 1st Avenue.
All the tires in the traffic spun red.
I stopped eating. Hed waited an hour
to tell me this. Who else could wait an hour
but him?
I dont know.
I made him tell me again
hoping the ending would change,
my eyes pleading for a punch line. No.
This was not a joke. My lover saw a person,
or, the top half of a person in the street
and he cant un-see it.
The lettuce began to wilt in all the blood,
the chicken sobbed thin as a ghost.
I apologized to it and dropped my fork.
That night my lovers breath reeked of car exhaust
and the tread of his fingers grew course.
As he steered them around my nipple,
down my ribcage, between my legs,
I saw a child in the backseat of a family car
her small face stretched to wax horror,
watching two fat pigeons play an angry game
of tug-of-war with a scrap of bread
shaped just like a nose.
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