Gams

THE 50 FT. TALL WOMAN IN LOVE

O Steve Martin, let’s get small, both of us,

let’s slip inside that lost decade

that was all yours and even then

your white hair was white in my dreams

and I’ll bring the wreckage

of my decade, the atomic dread

which set me going, which lengthened

my bones like the day. Sleeping

I could feel it and staring

out into the infinite California summer

I could feel it. The aliens

back then always disappointed—

paunchy, covered in tinsel,

sexless from their long voyage

through the stars. They talked that way,

landing their absurd craft,

lockstepping about like arthritic loons.

This one wanted diamonds

and I had one to give

that was bigger than an Idaho potato.

The Star of India

my husband called it

before he started seeing that other woman

down at the bar

that served spaghetti

at the mythic edge of our nowhere town.

But enough of me

and all my destruction,

the rampage

in my makeshift bikini of linens, bedsheets,

anything to cover up

so much iconic embarrassment.

It’s different now

and I’m different

and the years are getting away from me

and what we feared

then, the mushroom cloud

and its fissure

turning all to ash and splinters,

seems quaint

and my long bed is lonesome without a man

and you make me

laugh like thunder

so tell me you aren’t curious,

tell me you’re not

dying to see,

tell me you never

wanted a woman

in whom you could vanish forever,

tell me no,

I dare you.