Lindsey Royce: No Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
You opted for the straight fuck,
lust with no intimacy & mind-game
mystery, even though you tried to please.
I loved dearly the illusion you were,
mannish boy as John Lee howls,
masculine, smarts, a tender sculptor—
Hard to know if I’d be kissed or kicked,
yet I cherished you despite sullen silences,
ambivalent silences, lonely silences.
After a day at your favorite museum,
& a drive with talk polite & careful,
mostly in the seconds between songs,
we settled at your place to watch Louie CK.
I flopped in a recliner opposite the couch.
You took a chair behind me, where I couldn’t
see you, dark but for the TV’s bluish haze.
We hooted, separately, faces flushed with fun,
But whenever I’d turn, you’d evade my eyes,
feign hard concentration on the stand-up act—
So we could share a bed but never a laugh:
this, your most punishing silence.
Copyright 2018 Lindsey Royce
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Lindsey Royce
