The note says thighs and shoulders, mouth and eyes.
I wait tables at an upscale restaurant in Belle Meade. I’m eighteen
with an invitation to spend a day with a forty-year-old man –
play tennis, dine at the country club. Here’s his card.
Anthony builds houses, drinks bourbon at the bar, drives a Porsche,
smiles with dark eyes, trick eyes. He calls me
beautiful.
I bring his food on a round white plate. He tips well. I need money
for college. I am a flame-thrower. My heat strips the night.
I am a cracked window, a broken latch, an empty cupboard,
a lost key. I am a vision, Anthony says. He leaves me love notes,
beautiful eyes.
I am a dark cavern, a lonely owl in the night. I am a tattoo of birds
that fly up and off my arms. I keep Anthony’s card in a drawer by my bed.
Anthony is waiting at the front door of the restaurant. Anthony is watching me
count tip money. I am a tidal wave wrecking the shore. I am a lost pier,
somewhere out at sea. I am a fish – flesh and scales. I am bait.
I am a river cutting the canyon, a train surging between coasts.
I am learning how it feels to be a woman
and a man is a man is a man is a man is a
man.
Header photograph © Rick Lingo.
Sandy Coomer is a poet, artist, Ironman athlete, and social entrepreneur from Nashville, TN. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and she is the author of three poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Available Light (Iris Press). She is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Sandy is a past poetry mentor in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, the founding editor of the online poetry journal Rockvale Review, and the founder and director of Rockvale Writers’ Colony in College Grove, TN. Her favorite word is “believe.”