After Gregory Kyle Thomas*

i. you better stay away from copperhead road

If a young lass hadn’t brought her own cowboy to Dirty Dawgs

on a Friday night

her pickings:

older men wanting the feel of a young body in their hands

nothing

mostly a wooden dance floor

boot scuffs and spilt whiskey

from four and a half minutes

jumping and yelling

COPPERHEAD ROAD—

barely a line dance

couple pool tables on the side

was where I went alone

young one

in tennis shoes

and loose

sandy hair told me

his name was Kyle

courted round the dance floor

drunk feet stumbled

over each other, pulling his body along like a slinky

always leaning

hands held confidently

knew where he wanted to take me

we crashed into someone else

swirled and two-stepped back to the room down the street

continued his grip when I squirmed underneath

breath sweated my skin when we were both too tired

to keep dancing I slept in arms wrapped tighter

as night went on preventing my usual tornado

turning and tossing kisses woke me

released me promises of a call

he wrote under his number

Gregory Kyle Thomas

I lost my sockii. i wanna go home

My closet

where I hide

if playing

a game

retreating

pitch black

among spiders

forgotten tubs

graduation cards

black hole I stare

every night

drunken sleep

suffocates me

awake despite

the deepness

of my monster-

making tunnel

clothes swirl

round my bed

clean mixing sully

my bed has been

my home

moving

rooms

states

iii. drink up sweet decadence i can’t say no to you

Kyle called nt butterflied into my stomach I answered come here look to friends

try to explain his voice covers his ears I can do nothing but hang up

call after call after call after call after call after call after call after call after call after call after

better

come to me

when drunk

didn’t know sober

a touch too rough ask to leave I can’t walk around naked not my problem

will not leave my problem melts his touch on my skin no

he does not know no my problemiv. spiders in my mind you may take my eyes

His unflexed belly pressed my starving stomach

for a moment

filling it

white skin made him feel powerful though mine is easily ghostly

when he choked me

let him:

be the suppressor he was taught to be

gnaw on my bones

turned bark—a survival response

nymphs used to escape

men’s violent hungry hands

Mother Gaia chided never trust a man with three first names holding still

my feet

underneath

his weight stiffening skin

chilling fingers

held on my neck

unresponsive

to prods and pokes

I can be anywhere, I choose to be where I was,

in the room

in my home

in the closet

where it happened

waiting

century to pass

haunt new college fools who live too close to the bars steal their socks

*Section titles from “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earl, “I Wanna Go Home” by Sherm Cohen

and Vincent Waller,

“Good Enough” by Evanescence, and “Spiderhead” by Cage the Elephant

respectively.