BAR TALK
“Let’s call these little glances across the counter small talk.
I see you, baby, watching me through your whiskey glasses;
I can read you like a book.
When were you going to ask for my company?
Girl, let’s get this straight, if you didn’t want me
to have all of you, you wouldn’t have put it on the table.
You can’t blame me
for craving a taste
when every drop of you is teasing my sweet tooth.
Won’t mean a thing if you don’t mean it, right?”
He clinks his scotch against my glass,
and I am steaming like a clam bake;
talked up and put off
by his undressing every layer of my apathy.
Someone shouts at the TV in the corner,
“I’d have no trouble fucking Jane Fonda.
You don’t grow old and get bad
at what you’re good at, right?”
He nudges his buddy’s shoulder
and spills his ale over the side.
A girl across the bar
waves down the waitress;
pour me another potion, please,
help love happen for me.
We are all thirsty for something
they can’t brew us.
I’m less than swept away
when he invites me back to his place;
when he tells me he’ll treat me
like any good gentleman would,
any great pair of legs
deserves a great night
from any man who wants a piece.
Hey sexy, sweet pussy,
I bet you taste like peaches and cream.
Hey sexy, sweet pussy,
come closer,
let a guy live his dream.
Pick Up Lines
Oh, so you’re a writer? How interesting.” the boy says,
licks his lips, tries to imagine
what his name might look like in my bedroom;
what his love might look like in my handwriting.
I don’t tell him I write poetry.
Instead, I seduce him into my murder mysteries;
explain that I will write him dripping against the 52nd floor window,
a closed-door murder and the all newspapers know his name—and this is because
after all, isn’t this what he wants?
A girl so strung over his name she writes herself insane.
He tells me I’d look good straddling the backseat of his motorcycle,
but better around the perfect symmetry of his hips;
wrapped up so tightly in his sheets
that I’d never leave,
and oh, he can’t wait until I read him my work in the morning,
how it’d go great with the excuse he’ll leave
for never calling back
when I don’t write the right words.
Taking Your Coffee Black
He calls me Hell, Old Prescription Bottles,
Sweetie-You-Know-You-Can’t-Step-Out-of-Your-Skin.
I call him baby, mashed potatoes and gravy, Honey-
You-Do-That-Thing-That-Drives-Me-Crazy.
We don’t sleep in the same bed anymore;
take shifts on the couch whenever our backs curve
concave in the morning.
We take our coffees black now,
and I wait for this to get better.
I listen for the ways he tries to care for me,
but I only hear the ways they don’t work;
the sound of slammed doors downstairs,
the rattle of red pills swallowed too slow.
He tells his friends his girl’s gone crazy
like a dog that needs to be put down,
and something about the way we live now
makes me want to bring the garden pruners
out to the bedroom-
let him howl back for a tail between his legs.
I’m the same bitch I said I was from the beginning.
The only difference is,
you believe me now.
After the better days of tie-dye and moon shoes, Schuyler Peck came into writing; scribbling crooked words on crooked paper. An ashamed native of the New Jersey coast, Schuyler now studies English in Idaho, hoping her publishing pipe-dream is enough to cover the cab fare. She has been published in works such as Literary Sexts V. 2, Words Dance Magazine, and JuxtaProse Magazine. Check her out at schuylerpeck.tumblr.com or daisylongmile.com.
