Payday Loans (9 of 31)
I wake up with a hard-on and the light
between the hotel curtains gives the finger,
no rosy morn but pale pleurisied bringer
of the day to come: I'll write to write to write;
we’ll see, since we’re sight-seeing, the sights;
lunch with an ex-boyfriend not seen in years;
go to a bar where we will lust and leer
but do nothing before we call it a night.
I turn and turn and still the sheets disgust
me. He disgusts me. I disgust me. Lust
winds me round it. The finger, bruised, a slight
cut in the curtains, previously a smear,
hardens into a direction, clear,
desirable and promising as light.
*
from my journal entries on Savannah and Charleston:
March 23 Thursday. The Amtrak station outside Charleston was far smaller than we had imagined. Lonely Planet estimates the Charleston population at about 96 000, so the size of the station makes sense in retrospect. One room served as ticketing and administrative office, another a waiting room backed by bathrooms and a snack machine, the third another waiting room that ended with a huge TV screen showing the local news. A white man in his late thirties sat in that second waiting room, two bulky plastic bags by his side. Slowly we were joined by groups of white and black men and women. We were the only two Chinese men in that waiting room. We were waiting for the train to Savannah. Pat Sejak was chatting with the contestants on Wheel of Fortune. Only when the train pulled in did we realize that most people in the station were waiting for their family and friends, who now climbed down slowly from the train, the last step a low plastic stool placed there by a train conductor, and hugged and high-fived their waiting family, and were not passengers themselves. We climbed aboard the train which soon pulled out of that little outpost.
between the hotel curtains gives the finger,
no rosy morn but pale pleurisied bringer
of the day to come: I'll write to write to write;
we’ll see, since we’re sight-seeing, the sights;
lunch with an ex-boyfriend not seen in years;
go to a bar where we will lust and leer
but do nothing before we call it a night.
I turn and turn and still the sheets disgust
me. He disgusts me. I disgust me. Lust
winds me round it. The finger, bruised, a slight
cut in the curtains, previously a smear,
hardens into a direction, clear,
desirable and promising as light.
*
from my journal entries on Savannah and Charleston:
March 23 Thursday. The Amtrak station outside Charleston was far smaller than we had imagined. Lonely Planet estimates the Charleston population at about 96 000, so the size of the station makes sense in retrospect. One room served as ticketing and administrative office, another a waiting room backed by bathrooms and a snack machine, the third another waiting room that ended with a huge TV screen showing the local news. A white man in his late thirties sat in that second waiting room, two bulky plastic bags by his side. Slowly we were joined by groups of white and black men and women. We were the only two Chinese men in that waiting room. We were waiting for the train to Savannah. Pat Sejak was chatting with the contestants on Wheel of Fortune. Only when the train pulled in did we realize that most people in the station were waiting for their family and friends, who now climbed down slowly from the train, the last step a low plastic stool placed there by a train conductor, and hugged and high-fived their waiting family, and were not passengers themselves. We climbed aboard the train which soon pulled out of that little outpost.
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