Song - Fictional Work

Literary Review, Wntr, 2004 by Darcey Steinke

These things stay with me and so when I'm finally with you on the other side I'll remember how we went to the Log Cabin Restaurant for breakfast but stayed all day drinking Bloody Marys. You were fascinated with locker room slang. And you loved to sleep in your clothes, particularly your sweater vest and janitor pants. I remember as we sat in the red leather booth, bits of refracted disco ball light spinning, how I scanned your features-brown eyes with black lashes, thicket of silver hair, acne scars-for some clue as to why Paris is called the city of light. When, up on all fours, your cock rooted inside me, I asked you, if you felt IT, you always said YES. After the second glass of wine, I noticed that your green eyes looked like tiny planet earths and you told the waitress, the soup was delicious, and me that my profile was killing you. Later you kneeled down to unbuckle my silver shoes, talking all the while about how if Eve hadn't eaten the apple there'd be no reason for language, that words were needed only to define our separateness from God. Later when I saw you pull the girl onto your lap, my heart broke and I threw my donut down and ran out of the loft, down the stairs onto the Chinatown street. I no longer had you to love so I decided to love the world. But that was hard, as the world, if you haven't noticed, is not that easy to love, what with fast food wrappers blowing around the subway tracks where I waited in my slip dress for the Q train. I rode that fucker all the way out to Brooklyn, where I ran past the picnic tables and the BBQ grills to the shore of the lake to see if the flowers were on the trees. Pitching squares of chocolate to the ducks, I said with each overhand throw, my love, my own, I have looked for you everywhere, particularly in the pelvic region of the male species, but also in red wine and hardcover books. Sometimes you make the back of my head tingle and subsequently I confuse being known with being obliterated. Why make me wait for union when I'm willing to crawl into the tree, grab hold of your blossoms and fuck the dirt, my love, my beautiful one, quick before it's too late, grab my hand in the cab and kiss the nape of my neck and work that alchemy that changes everything into YOU. My beloved, my holy one, there is a melon in the fridge, split in half, covered in saran wrap. I got it from a gray haired man who was anxious to get back to his book on genealogy. This melon is for you. I'm waiting to feed you this melon, chunk by chunk right down to the rind.

Editor's Note: "Song," written after the Song of Solomon, is part of The Heretic Bible, which will be forthcoming from the Free Press in January 2004.

Darcey Steinke is the author of three novels, Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, and Jesus Saves, two of which were New York Times Notable books. She has published widely in magazines including Spin, London Guardian, and the New York Times magazine. Her web project "Blindspot" was included in the 2000 Whitney Museum Biennial. Her new book Milk is forthcoming in Fall 2004.