Women's Work

[flotsson]

This refuge along Parkway
where one returns after
emptying Fridays pay-
just to loosen lips,
and feet,
smells like
mother's macaroni,
cool grease,
stumbling nights,
and strolling days.

Here I,
in an apron that long since
failed to contain my
growing hips,
sway between
plywood corridors,
speckled with imitation
silver and porcelain.

As I bent to bus
a four-top I'd
picked up
from the ewe-eyed auburn,
slowly,
then all
at once
the rough inseam
broke
in a small deluge
of soft flesh.

Manager Benji was a real
gold chain chest
hair kind of a man.
Stomach back crotch
forward kind of a man.
tear the tears from you
with his teeth kind of a man:
A man who fancied
himself a Man.

As he shook the house
he spittled into me
the spangled truth;
we own this space.
What a terrible excess
of mulled Blood in his Dick,
to address us,
as such,
in our own kingdom.
so I took my exposed
boyshorts,
regal in their way,
and I sauntered out with dignity
alone intact.

In my car,
I began
to put the rest of
myself 
back together.