Riposte in Tertio

Riposte in Tertio

“Now she was looking
at me in a way she
never had before.”
—William Faulkner,
The Unvanquished

i didn’t know what—
it meant that dark humid night
but i’d soon find out.

scent of verbena—
oozing on the verandah
“kiss me, now,” she said.

“no,” i said to her—
“i’m not your big daddy like
all those other guys.”

i wanted to be though—
she's sexy & goodlooking
in her silk nightgown

“kiss me, kid” she said—
smoking her cigarette then
exhaling it in my face.

so i put my arms—
around her, knowing that she
was a guy in drag.

she had strong wrists and—
lots of elbow-power to
fuck my brains out good.
_______________

she was creole dark—
looked like a woman in her
eternal thirties.

ancient eternal—
pretty pouty big snake-lips
the wrap-around kind.

immitigable—
dark inscrutable summers
had come and gone by.

she’d ditched me real bad—
incorrigible femme fatale
of the big easy.

no longer virgin—
how many sugar daddies had
her drusilla lips known?

how could i forget—
back when i was a young man
desperate for her?
__________________

“sometimes i think”—
she said, "the finest thing that
can happen to a man…”

“is to love somebody—
a woman preferably,
hard harder than anything.”

“and then to die young—
because he believed what he
couldn’t help but believe…”

“what he couldn’t help—
(could not? would not) help to
believe and died for…”

drusilla and i walked—
in the garden, telling ourselves
things we didn’t believe.

drusilla made me—
kiss her and then i felt all
those feelings again.
_________________

impersonating—
all the forces i should’ve
defied, resisted.

so much for all that—
str8t integrity as well
as gay sanctity.

i wasn’t the same—
boy-narrator i was back
then when i loved her.

the pull of blood, lips—
creole queen cleverly disguised
back when i was a kid.

now she’s just a siren—
beautiful older woman
still hot for young stuff.