for Sherman Alexie
1.
As Reggie Polatkin reads about the white bitch killer,
her scent of anger rises from the book, open under his hand.
His eyes fog over and dream: a line scrawls across the sheets.
“I don’t care about your motivations,” it says.
2.
Reggie tries to embrace the killer in a wash as light as her skin.
He readies that teaching tool. But our heroine
has a Ph.D. in dick. She is thirsty, so she sucks him down
and scatters his bones so his soul will wander.
3.
Another time, Reggie thinks the white bitch killer is a Jesuit.
Everybody knows the Pope is against that.
It’s St. Blaise’s Day. She holds white candles
to his throat and chants, “Fish bone, fish bone, fish bone.”
4.
Reggie follows the killer through the old growth.
In the clear-cut, she fells him, and grinds him with bleach
and water until he is paper. She writes and rewrites her palimpsest,
but still the line reads, “You are not innocent either.”
5.
The last time Reggie Polatkin dreams the white bitch killer,
they are on the set of Alien, and she is Sigourney Weaver.
She says, “You should have killed me,”
and then her alien goes crazy on him, crazy on him, crazy on him.
Published in Pedestal Magazine (online), October-November 2003
©Beth Partin 2003. All rights reserved.
