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You ask me sometimes
why we couldn’t stay friends
why the taste of your poems
juicy at first like asado con ajo
grew bitter, then stale
but I couldn’t find
the words to describe
you’d been crowded
you’d been crowded
like a pool in the ghetto
in a late August heatwave
all those tangled legs
to swim through
slippery shanks of disillusion
torsos heaving the same poor-me
sighs, how you sing to my soul, guapo
they gnawed you like mongrels loyal
to the meat shop of a ghost town
on bone scraps of metaphor
I’d read a thousand times
day after day, you shook
the same words like an oracle
on payroll, they clattered
from your sack and we learned
to keep score
the clatter I tuned out
it was the keeping score…
I couldn’t stay friends
I couldn’t stay friends
with that.
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2015