Andre Peltier

She Showed Me Her Scars

The club was dark,
loud, empty.
Sadness floated
over the tables:
a spectre of lost
innocence.
I sat nursing a Scotch;
she sat nursing her
Newport.
“I’ve been dancing here
for about six months,”
she said.
I nodded with that absent
urgency she saw every hour.
“I’m from out of town,”
I lied,
“Tomorrow it’s back to
Chattanooga.”
Her ears perked.
She loved Glenn Miller;
on a family road trip
to the Okefenokee Swamp
when she was seven
she’d seen Rock City.
Those South Georgia
alligators though inspired her.
Razor teeth
and whip-like tails:
power, pain, domination.
The apex predator,
just like her.

Those lonely afternoons,
she silently circles the club:
eyes above the haze,
ready to strike.
“I have a new boyfriend,”
he suddenly said.
He’s been showing me things.”
An unexpected turn.
“OK, I’ll bite.
What do you mean?”
Like those Alligators,
he sliced into her.

Slowly, he slid his hooks
beneath her shoulder blades,
hoisted her on chains
to float like that sadness
over candles and rose-petals.
She lowered the silk straps
of her camisole
to show me the incisions.
Two jagged scabs;
two sets of homemade stitches.
“Touch the cuts,”
she whispered.
“Run your fingers over the scars.”
In the refracted light
of the mirror-ball,
my long, unknowing fingers
read the braille of her body.
My Scotch remained
unfinished on that table
as I turned to venture back
into frozen November wind.
An apex predator,
just like her.

The Treachery of Age

With knees like thunder,
I rumble down the stairs
at midnight
to stand naked
at the toilet.
Three, four, five
times a night,
I stand at attention
and dream of solid sleep.
I no longer touch
my toes
Before the flames
of agony ignited and burned
in my joints,
before the fire became real,
there was a simple time,
but I am old.
There was an easy time,
but now my calves ache,
my knuckles throb
with the agony of a slow
day’s work.
My body is a minefield;
each day introduces
a new equation:
adrift in uncharted
territory
Each new equation presents
the mathematics of sadness.
My feet, shoulder blades,
lower back:
traitors to the cause.