|
|
||||||||
| Poems: | ||||||||
|
"Marianne
Faithfull's Cigarette"
By Gerry
Gomez Pearlberg
From The World in Us
For L.
It was on the floor,
being X-ed out by her long
black heel, infinite and doomed. I had to have it.
Her lips had been
around it. Lipstick left on it.
I had to have it. I asked you to get it.
She was raking her
fingers through her thing blonde hair.
Glancing up at the ceiling, chain-smoking.
The academics around
her were talking, talking, talking.
She gazed up at the ceiling — bored, exhaling.
She rolled her eyes,
then looked at us and smirked, you said.
I missed that, pondering the acropolis of fallen cigarettes at her feet.
How they looked like
smoldering ruins — toppled, scattered.
Broken haloes of a calcified Atlantis.
Pondering chain-smoking.
What a beautiful word.
I missed the look she gave us, bemused and bored.
I was thinking about
the ring of lipstick on the filter.
I was thinking about the brand, and where she might've brought it.
Watching her light
up was like seeing the Messiah.
Or Buddha's burning moment under leaves of cool desire.
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg is the author of a collection of poems titled Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette (Cleis Press, 1998), winner of a 1998 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry. Other recent books include Queer Dog (Cleis Press, 1997), winner of a 1998 Firecracker Alternative Book Award, and The Fetish Papers (Big Fat Press, 1998). She was the editor of The Key to Everything: Classic Lesbian Love Poems (St. Martin's Press, 1995) and Zenith of Desire: Contemporary Lesbian Poems about Sex (Crown,1996). Her work has recently appeared in Gargoyle, Global City Review, Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and The Bark. She teaches poetry at The Writer's Voice in New York City.
Copyright © 2000
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg.
Back
to the Stonewall Inn