Men on the Floor
To be ten feet from Bono when he sings
“Desire,” the trade-off is men’s shoulders thumping
at my temples, elbows swinging like boomerangs
for hands to reach for cell-phones in back pockets
then stretched up and out to film within
my one clear sightline between man bodies. Then
elbows back again to slip phone against ass.
The constant weave and swoop away from arms
and shoulders piercing into adjacent
airspace, unconscious of nearby flesh. My feet
dodge jumping size-twelves, thrusting two-hundred
pounds upward and down, skyward and
to concrete. Excuse me, sorry, pardon me, oops, sorry——
I sluice myself like a rivulet through bouncy bodies
avoiding beer fists and sandal toes. It’s up to me
not to be crushed, my job to remain intact during
constant rumble and pummel of forearm and
bones that pump and thump the atmosphere
as they will. No real shock then when
an elbow strikes my jaw in stunning white burn,
as though predestined. My fault for daring to
be five-foot-two in a sea of six-footers whose
default is to splay out and up regardless of obstacles,
to let surrounding stuff risk its own breakage.
Pure Romance
For about a count of ten
he rummaged his tongue through
my labia with all the zeal of
someone looking for a pen
in the glove compartment before
the stoplight turns green.
Then he rose, wiped his chin
on my pushed-down jeans
and asked for a blowjob,
reasoning “hey I did something
I didn’t want to do…”
Road Rage
Your voice used to flutter and whir
alongside mine in the car,
while billboards, clouds
and cows zoomed by. But now
I want to open the window
so the sound of you is sucked out
toward ditches muddied
with duckweed and blackberry
brambles and Dasani bottles.
I’d rather my hair whip and needle
my face and redwing blackbirds
doppler their screeches, so I can’t see your
speedometer or hear the crush of fist grip
on wheel or revving up on slower bumpers.
They say a bird in hand…
but you’re worth less than
the two geese floating in oil-slicked
ditch muck and fine with it.
Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan whose work has appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022,) Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2022,) and Irregulars (Stanchion Books 2023.) Her favorite revenge story is the movie-cum-Broadway musical 9 to 5. When she was little, she convinced a neighbor-girl her full name was actually Kerinza (because she was jealous this other girl had both a formal name and a diminutive.) Thus any evil-twin-bizarro-villain version of Kerry would have to be named Kerinza. Her favorite historical feud is Quint vs Jaws.
