- monah mayhem
Two Truths and a Lie
Updated: Feb 19, 2020
The sudden rush from nothingness
casts a certain spell;
the unfamiliar smell
of a stranger’s sheets,
the daring potential
of the push, the pull,
a promise to unkeep.
In college, I hooked up
with Aaron Carter in his tour bus
after he played a concert stale
in a venue full of women who
were stuck, like old gum on the bottom
of a school desk.
I gave him a name
and a phone number that wasn’t mine.
When I was 21 couch-surfing
in Paris, I fucked a 46 year old man
just to see if I could
dangle the facets of fantasy
watch the prisms break off
dancing in his hungry eyes. I tried to warn him, declared
every god as limitless
but two months
later when he toured the U.S.,
I broke his damn dry
in Missoula, Montana
at the Dirty Dollar down
by the railroad tracks
shooting shots of whiskey
with another man. He listened
at the door while we had sex
in the bar bathroom.
The next morning he flew back
home to Paris three weeks early
& I wasn’t sorry
& I wasn’t sad
& I don’t regret
That grass grew golden
& I grew up
in a high desert summer
next to Rattlesnake Creek watching
the black and red Diamondbacks
coiled by the river’s sunshade.
Foothills slither, not unlike
our own entangled limbs, ready
to strike at any given moment, a desire
to conquer, to devour
the body whole
with unlocked jaws,
I will not, I will not, I will.
