HE ASKS ABOUT MY KINKS
Because I feel naked
during these conversations, I start small
with the lights turned off. Tell him I like my hair
pulled. He nods. Tell him I like dirty talk: Spank
me, daddy. Lick my geode.
And then what? he asks.
Because he has a sister and a Planned Parenthood
bumper sticker on his fridge, I reveal fantasies I’ve never said
aloud, like what really rocks my clam is going
to the Thai restaurant on South First
with a 33-year-old video editor named Jeremy
and not having to text my girlfriends
my location, In case I die. What pinches
my nipples is getting caught with my legs
hugging his face in the middle
of a downtown avenue under street lamps
turned on bright for once to save women instead
of dimmed to save the city a few bucks. What wets
my carpet is being blindfolded with a future
is female t-shirt while reruns of a sitcom
about a peppy blond bureaucrat who runs
for office in Indiana air during the Law and Order SVU slot
because there are no more stories
of jealous husbands prying open their wives’
skulls with happily-never-afters.
Because the last time I had sex I said yes
not because I wanted to but because my boyfriend’s
eyes said I deserve this and you belong
to me and I didn’t want a story
I’d have to keep in the back
of my nightstand like a velvet satchel
of trauma. I’d rather pull out
a hot pink vibrator than a hot pink taser. It would be so hot
to make a man my cuckold. Except instead of watching me fuck
another guy, he’s watching me watch edgy white male filmmakers
write something they know instead
of yet another fetishized rape scene, and then maybe
I tickle his ear and whisper: one in six women, or maybe
it’s four? Until he begs me to stop. Stop. STOP.
I have nieces.
Like that’s his safe word.
—from Rattle #76, Summer 2022
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Valerie Nies: “In 1997, I read the book Brain Droppings by George Carlin. One particular bit used lexicon, and my 18-year-old heart fell in love with both comedy and poetry. I love what both genres have in common: the potential to disarm through economy of language, and the poetry I enjoy most takes me from humor to the unexpected.” (web)
