polygraph of a teenage party girl

watching the world go by in light refractions
the neon-plastic peripheral from the lenses of
new years glasses. figure skating atop beer bottles
to cuddle up with my tequila soaked coddle,

i leaped into the engulfing night, kicked off
my heels and sprawled about my predation’s delight.
i get clumsy when i’m nervous, i wack my tail and drool
on the floor as i go running off into the mouth of an older woman

looking for an affair. i danced a fluttering burée along that
cliff ledge, before falling to my death on a motel bed,
tied up on my tongue among knots of cherry stems,
i ended up in some sunken place of chipped paint and

hands gripping my jaw. the disco beats slapped me clean
across the cheek though the liquor warmed me in such
cold touches that came crowding. the cool kids and
their cocaine pheromones stinking up the air as

confetti and tulle dress such a haunted room, the racing
to hang the streamers, the pacing back and forth of my
scampering gaze, red and blue lights torpedo in before
the electricity goes out and on and out again. before the

fluorescent lights pour into my pupils, dilated in anticipation
eyelashes batting and squinting as i prepared to meet god,
at the end of a hospital bed and straighten myself up to see grandpa
tell him how much mom misses him, my best sober impression

conjuring up in the clouds of dissonance. the walls collapsed in
on me, ready to have and to hold and the floor trembled as
a tangled up flatline began to stretch and unfold. the violence
of the gods was never to be outrun, even in the swimming, he
walked on that water and submerged me in the current.

i sprinted it all behind to this dive bar, hiding in the shadows of
patrons carrying me out the back way. won’t you bartender,
pour me a glass that will spin me out of this reckless world,
and i’ll trade you the polygraph of a teenage party girl.