So It’s Wednesday and Celeste is Dead
A couple pitchers of Natty Light, maybe three, at the Oasis
and every fifteen minutes a middle-aged stretch mark
spins on a brass pole behind the bar to Bon Jovi,
Cinderella, Poison, this time it’s Warrant “Cherry Pie”…
Half a dozen silent sweaty fat guys,
whose sweaty fat wives won’t fuck, sit stiff
on their barstools—and Celeste
in a furry pink nighty circa Playboy Mansion 1965,
slapping fives on the bar, screaming, Oh Candy
you make me wet, girl!
I asked about her snaggletooth
standing in an otherwise perfect picket fence
of bright white enamel. Braces, four god damn years…
She kept cutting the wire off the eye tooth
so it would never fall in line. Damn straight.
*
You got to read it tonight!
(Now I know why I’m here.)
We see the faded yellow sign,
Menagerie, Riverside’s only gay club.
“I can’t…fuck, C, they’re feminists…”
But it’s good and they’ll get it.
“I Love Your Cunt!?…I don’t know…”
Come on! Grow some hair on your balls.
She was beautiful that night—green eyes
black jeans, a t-shirt that read, “Faggot”…
her hair, manic panic black in two pigtails.
Anime-cut bangs, a variation on the Moe.
We shot Maker’s Mark in the parking lot
after the reading and Panda Man from D Squad
asked if I’d open for them on the Warped tour.
Celeste stood up, dropped her black jeans, and pissed
on the front tire of a Ryder moving truck.
What’d I say? Ha! I’m laughing my fucking ass off at you!
Have fun at grad school, dumb ass.
*
A letterman’s jacket with C-U-N-T across the shoulders
and a tongue that threw sparks like a grinder on a weld.
Her weld. Her bib overalls. Her tech college degree,
divorce papers, birth certificate, social security card
in the glove box of her ’63 Galaxy 500 left idling by the tracks.
*
An orchestra plays by the Mon River today,
strings out of tune, reeds too dry,
and light has swollen the brass off pitch.
At home the boys on Harleys are directing traffic,
stopped at Magnolia and Central,
and everyone has their headlights on.
A woman who calls herself a broad
and is proud she can take a punch. Yeah,
I can get my head around that. But this…
Celeste, it is Wednesday. It’s Wednesday, Celeste.
“Photograph”