Animals (a poem)

Animals


I guess she was pretty
except for the crooked tooth
& that damn smell. Why she
wanted to wear leather pants
& a rabbit fur coat in seventy
degree weather is beyond me.
The fuckin' thing shed all
over my seat covers.
Maybe that's what caused
the stench or maybe she
was just sweatin' bad -
hell I would of.
I don't know but whenever
I got up close something
smelled really horrid.
Later, after the movie,
I cornered her on the porch
& tried my damndest to sculpt
through her makeup,
like a beaver I chipped away
trying to reach her neck,
the whole time sniffing
the dead rabbits, till finally
pinning her against the door
& finding her not in season,
I growled a goodbye over her giggles
& headed for the car.


(Second place winner in the 1982 Sinclair Community College Writing Contest and my first published poem.  Later published in a small press magazine that I can't remember.  Also included in my chapbook Stunned By The Moment (1990). FYI: the crooked toothed girl was studying to be a fashion model, the movie was "An Officer And A Gentleman," and the I, as per usual, was me)

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