Heather Foster

BOP FOR BREAKING WEDDING VOWS

It started with a martini,
a good bra, and a slow, shared cigarette.
You leaned in, so decent looking
in your tan blazer and your wavy hair
like a bundle of kale, sexy
vegetable, so bitterly delicious.

Hurry up and love him.
Hurry up and please him.
And when it gets right,
You've got to leave him.

You buy me a shot of Cuervo
and watch me lick the salt off, suck the lime.
Ten years sober, you drink O'Doul's,
the emerald glass cold, the taste of almost
the real thing. You are my real thing.
You tell me you used to love mixing drinks,
cool kiss of a silver shaker
in your hand; the warmth of a girl like me.

Hurry up and love him.
Hurry up and please him.
And when it gets right,
You've got to leave him.

You were wild, you say, and your wife
said quit it or leave. What else could you do?
You loved her. She smelled like warm bread.
Once, you sat on a bridge over the brown
Ohio, and thought of jumping.
We make love in a room by the river.


*The refrain of this poem contains lyrics from "Married But Not to Each Other," a song by Barbara Mandrell.

Heather Foster lives on a 144-acre farm in Tennessee with her husband, kids, and Ozzy the heavy metal rooster. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at Murray State University. Her poetry and fiction is featured or forthcoming in PANK, Monkeybicycle, Anderbo, Moonshot Magazine, South Dakota Review, Superstition Review, Cutthroat, and Country Dog Review, among others.