—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