Mike Faran

South Carolina Trailer Park After Hours

I saw the rough outline of a woman
through the tiny peep-hole.
It was raining & she was knocking

so I jerked ajar the door, leaving
the chain hitched.
She might have had a gun r a buck-
knife,

but she didn’t have anything. Not
even clothes.

I grabbed her arm & quickly pulled
her in,
tossing her my hunting jacket
which she used to dry-off

without showing much. She was a
thin pretty blonde
with long streaks of mascara flowing
down her cheeks.

“The bears by the trash-cans ripped
of my dress;
I think they ate it….better that than me!”

“I know what you mean,” I replied
pouring out two double-shots of JD-

“The other day the boys & men were
huntin’ down ol’ Sasquatch & we came
away with nothin’ too!”

“& the big one chased me all the way to
your door,” she said while belting down
the two whiskeys. It was going to be
a fun & adventurous night!

 

The reading That I’d Been Waiting For

Joan is a sleek black cocktail dress &
aquamarine cowboy boots
just gave the reading of her lifetime-

her poems rattled & roared like dry thunder,
bright forks of lightning
flung from her feral
blue eyes & the rich

ringing echoes still vibrates these halls.

We could tell by her unwashed tussle of
blind hair- the way it poked out
sideways like windswept weeds- that she
was half-tanked.

Joan had read her “dirty” poems.
The ones she writes from the back of a city
bus.
The ones about dancing with naked drunks,
driving on acid, her 6 years in the Navy, etc.

After twenty minutes she had stopped cold,

did a military half-pivot & marched all the
way home,
all the way home to her little hovel on Santa
Rosa Island,
too late to catch the ferry.

Some said she made it;
most didn’t care because of the audio-tape.
Besides,
they didn’t want a slut-whore-drunk
coming around;

she made the children seasick.

 

Mike Faran is the author of We Go To A Fire (Penury Press) and has appeared in Barbaric Yawp, Homestead, The New Laurel, Iodine, The Main Street Rag, and many others.