Quilt's Corner: Southern Comfort

It’s Easter. We’re walking through the carnival
and how unlike a church. Everyone’s stiff
like a Baptist. These Florida women line up
in rows for the Swing Carousel, each seat polished
by briny rain and the wet laps of children. As it spins,
the women leer like angels (gargoyles in drag).

Force blurs their Revlon tips and Mardi Gras parade
of hats pruned in floral shops, and stones weigh
down their bodies. Gravity greases their wobbly knees
with grace as they race their own vomit. Even
the head of the choir peels up her skirt and takes
a steaming piss behind the busted Port-o-Potty.

We buy funnel cake from a woman with a snout,
her nostril curled as if already head-up in the shit.
Skewered turkey legs sizzle on spits like alien hearts.
“Have a blessed day,” she throws the pastry down
with her pudgy paws and offers a smile like a shot
of their bitter brand of Southern Comfort.

We eat on a bench near a ring of forgetful stones.
I touch my boyfriend’s rib, lingeringly, I know
he finds no meaning there but sidles over
and finds me. The hand of a random wind
steals the powdered sugar. I groan: “Why
is all the sweetness of the world so light?”

We can’t put it to our lips, but it’s marked us
like ashes, smattered our clothes. We’re
the lichen-spotted rocks—of ourselves, of this
moment, naked of pretense and sure
of our spot on the grass between the tipsy
women and the Tilt-A-Whirl lurching to light.

I hope they find a white spot on their waxy foreheads
and recognize the unkempt jonquil nodding disapproval,
noting those who suck their teeth as we walk by.

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