Medea (Oct. 2002)

Surveyor, sausage
deliveryman, retired cop,
state agent, parts store
owner, unemployed laborer:

all must have thought twice
before turning back to
pick her up: but lust is such a
common stay against the

dreary bloodings of age,
trumping all the suits
we thought to wear. Lust
is that lens which made her

so lurid for the press:
We see the bastards waiting
for her to catch up and climb
in, fingers drumming on

the wheel: feel the indecision
between forking up twenty bucks
for ten minutes of hateful sex
or peeling rubber back to

that job or wife where life belongs:
Feel the false privilege in the cab
of the truck as she climbs
up and in with heavy sigh,

country songs on K92
and a pint of Jack Daniels
now empty on the seat:
She palms the sawbucks

and then pointing back in
the woods where all the
action takes place: Feel
the goatish glee sour-mashed

with dread as they wind past
pine and palmetto to the spot
where a whore gets fucked
but good in the broad,

scadling light of a day
which unzips and rips:
The sense of enactment
is so precise that it takes a

moment to see .22’s snout
in her hands: To see beyond lust
to what’s really there, those pig
eyes meant to plead now

burning with a different
desire: To hear the gun’s
sudden yawps, two, four
times, maybe the entire clip:

Or what follows after all lust
collapses, the rapine
complete in the dripping
cab with the sharp smell

of cordite like sperm in
the air: To feel at last the
sense of justice, in turning the
whole perverse script of lust

on its hairy, indignant ass.
We loved the story which emerged
from the trial, reliving the passion
of her spree. Taking both sides.

Rooting for her one way,
in some other shadowing her
every bad step toward her end.
Everyone got what they deserved:

The rubes get rubbed out, the whore
our prick in the end. Someone
has to do the job. Mornings driving
in on 441 I pass a highway hooker

who’s worked that stretch for years.
She stands out from the dark
as if waiting for me in particular.
Our eyes lock for just one

second — I’m moving fast—
but it’s enough to feel that
ancient heat inside the
unkempt, thumbs-out gaze.

Inside every mark’s a Medea,
a cistern for paired lusts and
there for the taking, raking
hell on any hot, dreary

afternoon between here
and the next town, the next
enactment flipping its coin,
her tale, our fate.