Poetry
JoAnn LoSavio

Photo Credit: Angie Garrett/Flickr (CC-by)

Because They Say Women Who Cheat Are Sluts

A hook-up.
Casual sex.
A novel madness between my legs,
An exotic caress to confess.

I won’t lie;
there was no innocence.
Dangerously, I dialed,
I smiled,
told him he had my number now.

It’s not love,
what holds me back
from the decisive nod;
it’s getting caught in the crack; shaken, loosed—
Falling— into the space between—
Faithless woman condemned,
damned,
friendless for being unfair,
guilty for being guiltless.
But,
more than that,
it is a fear,
of being called worse for the wear.

Title Unknown, A Poem, Unwritten

She has on boxers, thick strapped Hanes
peeking out from the lip of her cotton khaki
pants,
feet dangling from unstrapped, black
mary janes.

What appears to be,
a clean, cotton, grey v-neck tee,
arms of ginger-freckled fair
skin, puckered out of frayed, seamless sleeves.
Washed, bunned, blonde, scrunched-up hair.

I cannot help but stare,
the casual cast of her life arrayed,
phone, keys and journal
on the counter of the coffee bar.
Perhaps splayed, or perhaps, cautiously arranged.

The pen comes out, uncapped,
poised, lightly tapped
on the edge of her unstained lip.
Black coffee sipped,
Black ink, waiting.

She writes, but stops,
paused with a thought
halfway out.
Pushed back in,
In the brunch-coffee-Monday zone,
buzz, phooshing, grindzzz of the coffee machine,
whispered words, directions, instructions, prescriptions into
cell phones.
There’s no room,
here,
for the poem she cannot write
at home.

JoAnn LoSavio has previously had poetry published in When Women Awaken and EastLit journals. Currently, she is a graduate student of history, and lives in rural Illinois where she takes long drives on country roads. Email: onwards1981[at]gmail.com