JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

The yellow pages are stained, all of them
from when I knocked over
the coffee cup in my excitement
over her thin lines back in sixty three

 

I sketched her furtively under
the school desk, between the pages
of my opened history book covering
my growing manhood
 

She was like a lamp post talking about
the civil war, all in black
so elegant and covered up
inexplicable somehow,
her indigo blouse buttoned firmly
to the top, faint aureoles of her
breasts behind the prim fabric
sketched with a subdued pencil
I thought of mannequins in shop windows

 

When she accosted me, I nearly fainted
from the closeness of her strength
black skirt slit
civilly down to the ankles
showing the barest hint of her
perfumes higher up, slaves yearning
to be freed

What a pity digital cameras weren’t invented
back then, but I’d sketched her sufficiently
as Alfred Waud or Toulouse Lautrec
might have, captured the essence of her
and now as the tide of war turned in favor
of the North, my hand recalled her
while staring at the page and

she stepped out, smiled shyly,
slowly opened the black and purple
softness of her, peeled herself
to the pith, knelt gently in front of me
and after asking questions about
the Gettysburg Address, grasped
me, her laquered fingernails explaining a point

 

As treasure island appeared between
her parted thighs, dedicated to that
delicious principle that all men are created
equal, I knocked over the coffee, which
spilled thickly, spurting hot from me onto
the page and when I looked
through the dabs
she was gone and all that remains now
are the stains