The Oversized Corduroy Comforter
I bought
once I sensed you were going to leave
smells only like me. Sometimes like steam
when I sleep with it pressed against the radiator.
But mostly like me.
You often said my scent was stronger than yours.
Musky, you called it. It gets me hard.
(But my sister just says B.O.
whenever I crash on her sofa.)
You said everything about me was stronger.
That you hated how I’d likely move on
faster than you would.
My friend Paul’s bed smells like pot
even when we haven’t smoked.
Like his Medicinal-Marijuana-Activist boyfriend.
Especially at the end.
Paul and I have been sleeping together lately.
No strings. For company.
He calls himself a widow but says he knows he’ll get by
when I hug him in the dark after we’ve come.
I’d feel foolish talking to him about you.
Because you’re not dead. Or even sick.
Just gone.
Paul showers with lavender and lemon soaps
and burns Nag Champa nightly.
I think he’s waiting for the pot smell to lift.
To know he’s finally healed.
These days I like sleeping at his place.
Or at my sister’s.
Because my bed just smells like me.
My ‘musk.’ Strong.
Reminding me that I’m not going anywhere.
House Beautiful
The mild one mixes fluorescent martinis
while his boyfriend guides the tours,
luring pairs of linen-clad guests
through lacquered halls, glossy rooms
visited by editors and on the verge:
their own spread.
Every now and then, he offers
a pause
before annotating: custom stained-glass doors
on some dead Dame’s armoire,
now deemed perfect for DVDs.
Or some aside on costs, fine-line laws
to avoid when shipping
from third worlds.
His gestures—animated and precise
as a game-show model’s—
alarm Baby, their drowsy French Bull
awaiting chase from her curl
on the lounge’s silk throw.
No one leans on the treated walls
or rests a cocktail spent—
the coasters themselves (Venetian?)
worth framing.
Even the 70’s spare room,
potentially passé anywhere,
seems period there.
How groovy, someone says,
the notion of a spare room
in Manhattan!
Then before pressing on,
the host bends to scoop
their quietly sauntering Baby,
collecting her in the cradle
of his long, gathering arms.
At the Filling Station (after Bishop)
I was there.
One of the saucy sons.
And later saucier
than they had wanted.
The bored, sweaty boy
in oil-permeated overalls,
arranging cans to say Exxon, on, on …
Only a woman of detail
(and boys like me)
could have noticed:
My mother’s needle-point.
And her begonia. I nursed it
when the guys were out on tows.
Though I knew it would die there.
It was something to do,
an instinct, habit. Like
my mother’s needle-point?
Better than the old carburetor
I was instructed to take apart and rebuild
when there were no lines
at the pump. Instead
I read paperbacks
(uninterested in my Dad’s
old comics lying about).
Or imitated (under my breath)
phrases seeping like fumes
from the head mechanic’s lips.
Dis radiator’s a real pissa.
A real cocksucka.
My father’s Camel non-filters ever fixed
like an on/off switch for his face.
Mostly off. I waited
on the office wicker sofa
for an explosion (Be careful
with that match!)
every time he ducked
under a steaming open hood.
But it never came.
Maybe somebody does love us all.
At least loves enough to notice.
© 2009 Michael Montlack
Michael Montlack's work has appeared in Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, Swink, 5 AM, Gay and Lesbian Review, Poet Lore, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, and other journals. He has two chapbooks: Cover Charge (Winner of the 2007 Gertrude Prize) and Girls, Girls, Girls (Pudding House, 2008). University of Wisconsin Press is publishing his first book, My Diva, in April 2009, and his third chapbook The Slip (Poets Wear Prada) will be released this summer. He lives in New York City, where he teaches full time at Berkeley College and acts as associate editor for Mudfish.
