What kind of big city girl are you?

You don’t own a vibrator, you don’t wax?

There’s no L’Obs in your bathroom and

you eat too much sugar and smoke American cigarettes

Come to think of it … are you sure you’re gay?

***

The radiator made its dying throes as

it began to warm

Roses tied upside down reminding me

of girls petticoats, gave off the scent

of the color green, her eyes were

Absinthe melting over brown sugar.

***

Outside, frost held onto glass like a woman

without a drink stares into bars

Chartreuse on her dry tongue.

***

Repulsed by me, she lay in my lap

like a hungry cat still claiming her cream

I’m not like the others, I said

watching the way her upper lip swallowed her small mouth

when she chewed it

when I demonstrated

big city girls come

in many different shades …

hers? Vermillion cast in

Château La Fleur

drunk hot-faced by a dirty fireplace

her thighs

tasted like fresh L’ile Flottante

found in the late patisserie

just when it had begun to pour

and stars lit the way home

pools of tiny perfection

quite impossible to sustain