The Holiday Spirit

Boot heels scraping stridently through
islets of gunmetal-coloured snow,
broad shoulders amplified by tough leather;
you wore an inscrutable look,
half machismo, half-resignation
while an anemic sun glittered,
sparkling the cafe door I came barrelling out of,
big eyes with no depth perception,
yet I plumbed your depths, recognizing you rawly.
You greeted me with the awkwardness of a robust turkey
bound for dinnerhood.
But lust trumps social discomfort,
and we slipped behind a cheerless, rusted dumpster.
Watching the breath forming
outside your dry, flat, thin lips used to giving orders,
I spontaneously plunged my tongue through them and
down your throat, wanting to swallow that breath.

Pissed off, you stopped me.
No fucking romance.
You could have hit me, would have punched me,
but you pushed me down, down, unzipping those trousers.
This was your Christmas, not mine.
So I gave and gave,
my tongue snaking,
my teeth grazing,
my saliva dripping hotly.
You thanked me by grunting and snorting and swelling and thickening,
expressing your gratitude rudely
with a salty explosion covering my tonsils.
Nodding a brusque farewell,
we retreated in silence,
you to your barracks,
me to my questions.

 Sunday Dinner

A forced sit-down arrangement,
provoking panic at the contemplation
of endless rounds of peas and potatoes being passed
alongside pointless portions of platitudes and pleasantries,
this year does not disappoint
in terms of absurd dastardliness.
My darling sister has brought
her new, family-approved, live-in beau.
So cute together, they even share the same initials.
I’ve nearly clenched my molars to calcium-rich dust.
No cigarette has passed my lips in over a decade,
but tonight I would kill for a carton of Marlboros
as I’m treated to stories of their precious Persian kitty and
of their new condo where their furniture,
bought separately,
is so well-matched that “it’s hard to imagine it was ever used separately,” Mom quips,
between bites of lamb, in a tone so chirpy it would make a nightingale puke

With Ceauşescu-like rigidity, condescension and wrinkled noses rule
over standard questions asked of my latest goings-on.
Has he met someone?
Is he thinking of settling down?
Is he going full-time and not freelance?
And why does he poke about with vegetables when vegetarianism is simply a fast-track to anemia?
I’m mature, “not getting any younger,” as Dad reminds me,
nonchalantly buttering his second biscuit.
Inwardly exasperated, I turn to my one last outlet
with the kind of desperation once reserved for the Little Match Girl’s final match.

Within seconds my fingers are discreetly texting the words
“Fuck me. Now.” to Goran, the rough, horny bank teller,
who drills whenever I ask him to drill.
Pretending to adjust my napkin under the table, I send SMS after SMS,
each raunchier than the last, ending with his frantic
“Ull be home tonite?”
Flushed and smiling,
I subvert this nuclear family moment,
reassured that I soon will be home.
back in my sage-and-sweat-scented lair,
my confidence levels once again brimming,
with Goran nailing me for real.
Not cutely.
Not out of love.
But for the high that is my kind of Sunday.

Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Adrian's poetry has appeared in The Mackinac, Aberration Labyrinth, Postcard Poems and Prose, Red Weather, Red Fez, and others.

Gem Blackthorn is QMT's Sex Columnist, and the author/curator of Lust Thrust Thursdays. Send her your submissions and questions at sexsexsex [at] queenmobs.com


Image by star5112.