Outside cincinnati

by Gaby Garcia

the sky is blue butter and his eyes are bulging
at the crossroads because he’s been driving
so many days he says he dreamt in blacktop 
at the Holiday Inn Express and his feet churned
in the stiff sheets reaching for pedals. He says I fell
asleep in my winter coat like a child in from the snow
and he unzipped me, talked me into my nightshirt
but I don’t remember. We are unshowered, we eat up
time with I’m Thinking Of Somebody. I stump him 
with Monica Lewinsky and he tries to trick me
by picking God and making me work for it. 
Do they live in America? Not exactly.
Do I know them? Not personally.
I roll the window down and stick my head 
out like a dog, let the cold rip out an eyelash.
I tell him about the old woman in the park
back home who wears chunky jewels and stripes
and talks about sex. How it isn’t a joke 
even though  everybody thinks so. You’ll be like that,
he says,  and it won’t be funny.
I can imagine touching your skin. 
 
AUTHOR
Gaby Garcia is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose work has appeared in North American Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is a James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist, “Best of the Net” nominee, founder of the podcast On Poetry, and served as a Lucie Brock-Broido Teaching Fellow at Columbia University, where she received her MFA in poetry. She lives in Brooklyn.