Tony Gloeggler

WISH

A woman who looks a lot like the woman you loved last summer
walks down Houston Street while you're looking out the window
waiting for the woman you recently met to return from the rest
room so the waitress can take your order. She's wearing something
that might be the Betsey Johnson coat she bought on sale in August.
It's off-white, sort of feathery, and you remember nodding,
saying it looked good, yeah real good, when she stepped out of bed,
slipped it on over her sleep warm skin and modeled it
around the room. You loved the way it was cut, how it showed off
her ass, perfectly contrasted her dark cunt hair. The collar
is turned up and a purple scarf covers her nose and mouth
like some underground terrorist. Still, the way she holds her head,
how her long easy strides eat up the sidewalk reminds you
of summer and the night she took you home to meet her cats
and you sat down on her couch and kissed until it was time
for you to take the F train all the way back to Brooklyn.

Tonight the waitress is bending over beautifully.
Her breasts are rising and swelling as she leans
even closer while the woman you recently met
glides across the room, touches your shoulder and sits
down. She's tattooed and pierced in all her secret places
and tonight could be the night you get to suck and bite
each one. But while you're deciding if you should step outside
and chant the woman from last summer's name, she keeps walking.
She's heading north on Avenue A, turning right on Second and climbing
those same four flights while the woman sitting across from you is saying
she's got this thing for older guys and she can't stop thinking about you.
Your dick is thicker and it's throbbing harder than you thought
possible, and you wish it wasn't true, but you would forget
this woman, her full lips, tonight, and all the nights you will ever
spend with her, if you could only watch the woman you loved rattle
through the cabinets and get down on one knee and feed her cats.

Tony Gloeggler is a native of NYC and manages group homes for the developmentally disabled in Brooklyn. His books include the chapbooks ONE ON ONE which won the Pearl Poetry Prize in 1998, TONY GLOEGGLER'S GREATEST HITS (Pudding House Publications, 2009) and two full length collections ONE WISH LEFT (Pavement Saw Press, 2000) which went into a second edition and THE LAST LIE (NYQ Books 2010).