“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove,” Robert Frost wrote, “the poem must ride on its own melting.”
Her cry sliced through crisp winter air
like a dart through tavern smoke.
Hello, she called.
He had been watching a flight
of croaking ravens wreak havoc
in a nearby Douglas fir,
flocking noisily;
at first he didn’t recognize the sound
as his own language, but then he turned.
Hell.
Oh.
She was standing up on her porch
wearing nothing
but a t-shirt
which hung to her knees
and proclaimed I’M WITH STUPID.
Holding the glass stormdoor in one hand
and a long filtered cigarette in the other hand,
a couple of minutes to kill
between Oprah and Donahue.
He imagined he could see her nipples
hardening with the change in temperature
and he wondered what color they were.
He liked pink ones the best,
like berries ripening.
Brown nipples, liked them, too.
That’s some big dog you got there,
she said with a sly smile
disguising sharp edges in her husky voice,
a hook somehow glinting in noon light.
He noticed she was looking
at the crotch of his jeans,
swelling at the mere sight of her.
Tried to think up some wry reply
but all he could think to say was,
I bet you tell that to all the guys,
and he knew that would sound lame,
so he gave her his quick shy cowboy smile,
like she’d surprised him.
Which she had. She resembled Farah Fawcett
in one of those made-for-television movies
where you don’t know right away
if she is the heroic victim or
the satanic serial killer.
She was slender with big blonde bangs
and pert breasts and a slim waist and narrow hips
with an overbite and high cheekbones.
Pale. Ballbuster, he thought.
Her nipples were probably pink.
Is he friendly, she asked.
Would you like to pet him?
Pink.