The Last Murdered Girl
They fascinate-
spread-eagled in ditches and roadside fields, folded up in trunks with wedding
dresses, stored for years in old refrigerators like moldy bologna.
We write about them, scream
at the live versions running through woods, always falling down in those Get-up-
you-dumb-bitch-he's-got-a-machete! movies.
Eternally friendly, calling
Hello? Hello? to rooms of knives, maybe the clumsy and gregarious
deserve to die, wash up on shores of lakes and rivers, eyeball-less, swollen.
What would we do without
them? It's a fantasy to think murders might cease, like Cain and Abel in
reverse; Mr. X laying down the knife, things returning to proper usage:
gloves to cold hands,
pantyhose un-wrung from necks, duct tape back to patching rusted-out quarter
panels; the last girl found fileted
we'd wreath in roses, the
revered patron saint of our evolution. But who are we kidding? It's fun to
watch naked women run in terror, hair streaming, boobs alternately
defying gravity. It's like
a fire in the groin - the urge to chase, grab, hold down, shhhhhhhh,
make still, almost seems natural.
For Kim Addonizio
A Porn Shop in Florida
What thoughts I have of you
tonight, Ted Bundy, as I walk the narrow asphalt of this Florida road, trees
hung with moss, past Mrs. Fleming's small bathtubs of staked tomatoes, ripe red
bulging in moonlight, into FasciNations neon
stocked with perpetually
surprised plastic mouths, penetrable genitalia. Choose Nine bodies! Fourteen
faces! Three different pubic hair styles! These teddy bears with benefits for
the lonely man, the deformed, ostracized – and you, John Wayne Gacy, what are
you doing
near the 'women'? I knew
I'd find you Ted, poking among the dildos, eyeing the gaggle of sorority girls
near the edible undies, their coral tipped toes, youthful lives amplified by
the florescent worry of being seen in a place like this. I hear you, in your
best Young Republican voice,
fake wedding band flashing,
introduce yourself as a professor, doing research, a chore for your wife,
asking questions: A party? On campus? I watch you fingering films of the tight,
popped, wet, restrained; follow you down rows of brilliant titillation,
ultraviolet erections, bondage
dice, deluxe breathable
ball gags, bottles of Big Buddy's Anal Desensitizer. What are you looking for
Ted? Inspiration? An excuse? This place is 24/7 and you've been here before,
never passing the cashier, never really paying. Stepping over our bodies,
shining your shoes, what
America did you create? Your shadow vitiating darkness, I've seen what you can
do. Lights on in all the houses, windows latched against cool night blooms, I
wade weeds toward home, dare the shortcut, wondering what you've left us to
discover.
after Ginsberg
