Black Betty

 

Hasenheide 100 x 120 x 1,5 cm/39.4 x 47.27 x 0.6 in acrylic on canvas

THE CAT’S WHISKERS

                                                    “I never been anyplace I wanted to go.”

                                                                   A woman from Biloxi, Mississippi

After drinking shots all night I

recovered in this cross-roads town

where not a soul noticed my ambivalence.

How could almost no desire

cause envy? I didn’t know how to take

care of myself. I never dressed properly.

I was one of those people who have “issues”

no one’s interested in. And then Kelly-Anne

got out of jail. No one knew if she would

ever come back again. After what she did.

Yet all they could do was roll their eyes and have

another sip of Doctor Pepper: the world stitched together by sin.

I fell right into her corner pocket. Everything fit.

No excitement; sweet calm of the inevitable

as shown in Plato’s Symposium. The movie version.

Everyone said we were designed for each other.

Intelligent design probably not but that

didn’t stop us. She was readymade,

found, too wild for any place but me. I with holes in my

underwear, watching her watch reruns for hours.

On a wager, I ate six hot dogs at Mel’s Place:

I felt like a winner that night, like the cat’s whiskers.

Could you put a little more gravy on those biscuits?