—LOVE ME TWO TIMES
Gigolo
You sit ogling the bottle
as if it is your dead father
a tombstone priest professor
Jesus or a naked woman
her throat un-slit sleek as a swan’s
her midriff ornately labeled
yet currently barren
You lunch with a cousin bottle
and its cousins and their cousins
who all take turns throwing
their fruit yeast and alcohol
down your throat until
you are buoyant again
floating stool to stool
cockeyed dull and confused
like a shipwreck that refuses submersion
Hope tattooed somewhere
under your greedy tongue
You take to sleeping with the bottle
sipping between dreams of anarchy and angst
guzzling after each verifiable nightmare
burping into your pillow with
the burnt breath of a blowtorch
replacing one sleep partner after the next
like the liquid lothario you are
same as your dad brother sisters
those soul mates belching at the bar
glass chinking everywhere like champagne toasts
It’s no Ripley’s you lose everything—
love luck money transport Lucy the parakeets
—but the bottle has moxie knows magic
the perfect incantation to make it
all not matter if only until refilled
which is the problem always has been
that performative emptiness neediness
another Monday Father’s Day weekend
or decade to kill
until the floor falls out and you with it
a stain the size of a ghost man
a hologram gone burgundy
then parched pale
then simply gone
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