The bus is late, someone has vandalized the electronic ticker
that usually tells you how long it will be
that’s all right for old timers like me
we waited in rain for buses for a living
long before the comfort of things that get vandalized
our bus stop wasn’t covered or worth beating up on
it grew weeds and graffiti ardently
the seats were hard and slick with a mélange of pop
in those days too many lesbians wrote poetry
and didn’t write to each other
you could sometimes pick them out in a bar
they’d give you an icy stare if you tried to smile
their curling angry hair aflame with unsaid words
pressed into damp bar paper, wrinkled and sour
I found a lost poem once, stained red by a cheap
bottle of rioja, burgundy circles like rejected
carnations, bleeding words into indistinguishable welts
she’d used an ink pen, she got points for that
this invisible woman of left poems who wrote:
***
I sit here week after week
in the one seat where they haven’t installed over head lighting
I don’t want to be seen, or noticed and
as I say that, I also know, I am standing on the bar in my imagination
dancing to my favorite song, hoping a woman
who I have looked for my entire life, will climb
up onto the bar with me and tilt her long neck back
exposing her pulse, and laugh that deep belly laugh
that reminds me why I stay, watching for silver anklets
sitting on this stool that’s uncomfortable and cold
dreaming of being someone I’m not
unable to even ask her to sit down with me
and drink this bad rioja until our lips are stained crimson
all these weeks I have tried but you couldn’t tell
by the way I am built around static, the ache of
my heart will remain a stain on a napkin long after
I give up waiting and leave this bar, never to return
because too many lesbians write poetry and do not
write to each other and don’t look up when I
look down, because we are tallow candles burning
words and lovers of poems with no way of expressing
outside the ink spilt, along with this bad rioja, our sum.
***
I hightail it out of the bar, my chest burns from sudden exersion
the bus is still late, I catch her walking over-slow
through belting rain, ,shoulders heavy, her step
withered, she tucks a sheaf of wet hair behind her
ear and tilts her head upward, wordlessly she
opens her mouth and lets the cascading rain fall where
words are lost, trailing like summer dresses in storm
she is tired, sitting heavily when she arrives on plastic bench
squinting through unceasing rain for the recalcitrant bus
not knowing when it will come, if at all
sole light flickering as it loses power against downpour
casting her into shadow and oblivion
june bugs crashing against one another in fury
I run faster, my unused calf muscles on fire
her now wet poem clutched in my hand
I am no longer beautiful, smooth skinned or able
to climb onto bars and fling a
creaseless neck to the winking stars
but my knees are still strong
and I believe
I will reach her
before the late bus arrives.
Wow! Love this.
I am wanting you to catch her, to begin talking of and in poetry, no longer caring how lat the bus may be.
Splendid imagery as always – I found this one very sad
Wow I absolutely love this!