Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash
Sex, Lies and Videotape scarred
me, peeled me. Stories of women’s erotic lives,
made me think: I didn’t have a sexual story.
But wanted one. No panacea, but gunpowder. When the dismissed wife, Ann,
talks of her husband, Spader says, “He’s a liar.”
You have to destroy layers, until nothing is left but light
and molted skin. If I were interviewed by Spader, I’d say, “I ran from
episodes of buried choices.” I’d also say,
“I am a liar, but only by way of fear.”
He would say, “What is fear?” and I would say,
“Camouflage,” “A lost message,” and “Someone falling.”
He made me notice hands, expressive, alight with life,
to think what men could do with their hands,
I hoped to move the horizon of my life, lift my skirt, be his woman.
Be a furious lit match, no apologies.
You have to know what you want, which means
you’ve tasted something,
whether or not scarred:
lies claim space they don’t rent. Spader’s electric
aloneness, direct speech was sex to me, and this
rearranged my world like Mercator is a liar.
I wanted him to cradle me, and me him, tender and craving. Look into his
eyes and speak what scares me.
I never wanted to be known, until then:
the prerogative of the lost. He destroys his tapes. If he were to interview
me now, I’d say, “We’re what’s left after the stories burn.”
And scene. Credits roll.
Lynn Finger’s poetry has appeared in Unlost, Journal of Compressed Arts, and the Ekphrastic Review. Lynn is one of the founding editors of the forthcoming journal Harpy Hybrid Review. Lynn works with a group that mentors writers in prison.