China Blues by David Donnell Read Free Book Online

hips & her head back.
    I’m sitting down on an empty box,
    she’s being cocky,
                         here in a dark meadow
    out on the Cedar Road,
    under this harvest red copper hinge in a cobalt sky
    not far from where we used to play as children.
               I know what she means. She means just slow
    at first then fast then really slow
    – like that couple in
Badlands
    dancing beside the parked car on their way west
    one bank after another.
               She undoes her tomato red blouse
    & her breasts catch the light like flowers
    5, 6 minutes from the river where we used to smoke
    brown leaf golden tossed crumpled cigarettes
    & talk about each other’s bodies
    & why Paul wouldn’t go to the school dance
    with Esther.
    “No,” I say, “I don’t,”
    feeling my balls turn upside down
    like a picture in
Gray’s Anatomy
, Erasmus reflecting
    on the history of Holland,
                                     old Haarlem,
    Jan Steen’s painting
Girl Eating Oysters
    my balls turn upside down in my faded jeans
    & go into my throat like a chicken bone
    or a big piece of crusty bread. I have some
    matches in my pocket. I get up & walk toward
    the Mackenzie’s blue & grey barn.
    Tomorrow I want to reread
Day of the Locust.
    Tonight I want to set fire to this barn.
                                                      She turns
    away in the moonlight & looks back her face looks
    like a famous painting or a great perfume advertisement
    in a glossy magazine but subdued by shadow.
                                                                 Her sweet
    brown nipples ache in my throat like bitter elm buds.
    Her blue eyes singe the back of my throat.
    I put the bottle back in my jacket pocket & keep
    walking, head way back, toward the barn. Her skirt rips
    at my stomach like a dark blue knife.

KISSES
    For example last night, it was Thursday, I said to Paula, “I just can’t make the good things happen here.” I was speaking of Tobacco Heaven, the city with the big stock exchange on the north shore of a lake. There was a large pot of soup on the stove. Paula is an old friend. She was sympathetic and made drinks. I told her I thought it would be better in New York or Chicago; New York is pretty gay, and I have always had romantic ideas about Chicago, because of Sandburg perhaps, that one poem.
    And she says, “It’s not working in Toronto.” She usually calls it hogtown although there haven’t been any hogs lapping up acorns down by the lake since 1790. “Maybe that’s because it’s a
big
city,” she says, “so why try another one?” She sips her drink, just a splash of red, she never drinks liquor, but the woman she lives with loves Martinis.
    “Small towns are nowhere,” I tell her.
    Paula is slim and wiry with short cropped thick ash-blonde hair and a smile as big as your shoulders. “Maybe,” she says, “you’re asking for the same things …”
    O yes mama I want the same things, the same things to happen over again. I love to be enthralled, and I loahv to have my heart broken.
    “Whatever they are …” she leers at me with a wonderful pleasant raisiny cinnamonny smile.
    Then we got into tasting the soup, tomato & dill, yum yum, it sure is good with that calabrese bread; she gets out some black olives and some green olives, and I make myself another drink.
    Carol would be home around 11, no point in holding supper until then. Paula says, “There’s nothing wrong with the city,
Deuxmains
, a big museum, a great university, lots of art galleries.” She calls me
Deuxmains
because when I come for supper I always have seconds. The black olives are good with a mouthful of red soup, the fat green olives are good if you let the scotch slosh around over them until you think of green birds in the jungle, lifting their wings and