If the Girl Knows Where to Fuck

by Sue William Silverman

 

Up, down, sideways along a map’s
red highways in stilettos

sharp as cactus
crossing deserts,

in snow drifts
all through steppes,

pinned beneath stalactites
in musky caves,

inside hydrangeas, feverish
in hospital beds and crowded

in downtown morgues,
behind velvet pews

and incensed
altars, swirling

in sandstorms
of sweat, along subway

tunnels, woven
in spider webs, snuffed

inside smoke stacks,
and developing in voluptuous

photographs, zooming around
the equator of night.

Adrift on lily pads, slick
inside oysters, shooting up

in rockets. On conveyer belts
like an amusement park

ride that attracts
the desperate-to-feel-

alive. Inside clocks,
mesmerized by time

ticking backward. Behind
bars and in bars, pounding

on dance floors, in iron-pipe
motel rooms, out of control

in intersections
just as lights

change from green to caution
to stop.

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SUE WILLIAM SILVERMAN‘s poetry collection is Hieroglyphics in Neon (Orchises Press). She is also the author of three memoirs: The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew was a finalist in Foreword Review’s 2014 IndieFab Book of the Year Award; Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction is also a Lifetime TV movie; and Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. Her craft book is Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir, and she teaches in the MFA in writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Please visit: www.suewilliamsilverman.com