Yow! thanks, everyone.
Here's a revised version.
The most important change is to the second-last stanza, because I didn't
mean to talk about the loss of a potential child, but everyone seemed to
take it that way.
I messed with the beginning then decided to leave it as is. Yes, Judy,
Andrew, I thought when I wrote it that I could delete the first two stanzas
and start straight in with the action. The question is, do they add
something? and I think they do. They set the scene and the tone. Without
them the mood is wrong... it's too brutal, too Pulp Fiction. I tried
compressing them, but something got lost. Sense of space and breath. So...
*thin*
His piss in the toilet,
his siren sweat in the air:
gone, in the light.
In the sink, a glass, his lick
dried on it
somewhere.
In the open bin on the tissues and plastic,
two knotted condoms, 3am, 4am.
He wouldn't stay till morning, add a third.
He wouldn't sleep
beside me.
Naked in my purple bathrobe
I kneel on the vinyl beside the bin,
pick out the condoms, hold
them in my fingers, his come,
no longer white, now cloudy-clear and thin,
his sperm dying.
He was so hot.
From the drawer by the sink
I get the big scissors and, not knowing
what will happen, make a small cut
near the end of one condom. His come rushes
onto my hand, cool, amniotic,
albumen-clingy, thin, slightly
distasteful. I wouldn't lick it,
now.
The kitchen is chill, silent, scentless.
I raise my skin, inhale:
clean cut grass and musk
tainted with latex.
I can't smell him, only
an abstraction.
The danger I couldn't touch
runs over my hand into the bin.
Before I can do anything
I have to wash it off me.
a draft by Janet Jackson
24 January 2010
--
Janet Jackson: Words with attitude & soul
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