by Kate Braverman.

We are good at opening dialogue.
It's our specialty.
That and the goodbye scene
we could recite in our sleep.
It's the middle that defies us,
the substance, the ordinary progressions
that weave events into patterns,
textures, the three-dimensional.

No.  You cannot read my letters.
You cannot
take your eyes off
your reflection in the mirror,
your extravagant rhetoric
and unshakable conviction
that you will always look thirty-four,
that your charm will be indelible
and bankable, like an occupation.

You sense I know your secret name.
You fear I will say it out loud
and I will.  Whore.
You who live from interchangeable beds,
feeling passion a pressure
you can't deliver,
tangled in ambivalence,
trying to make love
while adjusting your silk tie,
shining your Italian shoes
spare sports jacket in the back
of your broken car.

Your secret name is whore.
You are in love with your mother.
No woman is perfect enough,
as pretty as you or her.
Know this, whore.
I am your greatest mistake.
I will hate you as the seasons turn
in August heat and sudden storms
as you drive from one woman to another,
one slice of city view after another.
You will sense this following,
this uniquely fashioned arrow,
this intangible wound that will not heal.

I am the shadow on the corner
and a certain way the neon will scratch
one window after another,
relentless and haunting.
You will come to know it,
taste it, dream it.

Me, lit from the inside,
whispering your whore name
mixing my burned mouth
with the Santana winds,
becoming part of you and the landscape.
In the smog, in the mist
in the moonlight and jasmine
digging in under your skin
in a way you will never forget.

Copyright 2006, Kate Braverman.