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Sexy thinks, “I’m an animal for raisins," grabs his keys. At the stairs, he wishes for a collar. Then a coin—something to flip like a switchblade. He wants to undo one greasy button, put his chest in sunlight.
Before keys chime the engine, Sexy knows how to want.
On the dashboard, a yellow photo: a sturgeon hoisted by the tail. The spinal plates line up with the taco-meter’s needle just before third gear on the interstate. Sexy reads, “The Urge for Sturge," scrawled in pencil across the bottom, where the mouth is propped open with a rubber boot.
***
Sexy coasts the supermarket aisles, a basket of eggplants hanging from his arm. Opening the frozen foods, he vanishes into frost. He writes his name on the white door of the shrimp case, then glides to the deli where the afternoon batch of rotisserie chicken wheels through dark fire. They wink at him, and he feels like Desi Arnaz.
At the checkout, he remembers his need for zest and throws a large package of 9-volt batteries on the conveyor belt. Kittens need their nails trimmed, the moon is in Virgo, and some fuck has 6-week abs.
“Would you like some help out?"
“Give me that one," he says, pointing to a short kid with a mushroom-cloud haircut and a dumb-as-drool jaw. Sexy loads his shoulders with eggplants and batteries, sends him out first. They both begin to sweat from their hatred for ugly people.
***
At the meat counter, the language is Gesture.
Hands guide each other to the loin,
To the shoulder with the smallest bone.
Murietta likes his pale thumbs:
Their lust for scallops, for that crab right there.
A sequins donkey waltzing
From the hum of coconut milk,
She weighs, passes him a good meal
Over the Caribbean sheen of metal countertops.
He carries the moon in his teeth.
The brush of his knuckle feels like a wave.
Douglas S. Jones lives in Tempe, AZ, where he co-edits poetry for Hayden's Ferry Review. He has work in or forthcoming from Clackamas Literary Review, Quercus, The Comstock Review, and The Potomac Review, among others. He is finishing his MFA in Creative Writing at Arizona State University, where he is the Teresa A. Wilhoit Fellow for 2005-2006.
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