“Need”: Voting Booth After Dark (Excerpt)

The warmth of a pair of perfume scented arms
As they wrap around your heaving body
while it sheds tears of dead ends.
Of moments spent in the arms of full grown men
depraved*
Of unkind mirrors carved to reflect

the loss of your innocence.
The stretch marks, flabby skin, sagging tits,
Open pores
Drunken bruises
Raccoon eyes
Grey hairs and dirty nails
Chafed inner thighs
The death of innocence.
In between point
Before you get wise. Wisen up.

The broken caretaker and her
morning breakfasts served with a tad of hope
and a spoonful of despair.

The pathetic way you roamed the rooms
of dirty bars
and bad music dance clubs
with a stench of need.
The expensive kind.
$60 in 20 minutes sort of smell.

The 7ams that called you to job.
Job. Job. Job.
When you pulled your numb right arm
from under the drool stained pillow.
And sat with it
One eye open
Till the tingling lead it to move again.

So you could drive through rush hour and
find parking on the busy street.

The moments you admired the little pink and violet
flowers in the potted plants
Outside the concrete building
where everyone, everyone
took the elevators not the stairs.

Those secure fingers. That hold up your weight.
The weight of your pathetic
- others would say vulnerable -
temple.

It’s not the body’s fault.
Every body, regardless of who inhabits it,
Needs a good strong true hug.
Every now and then.

Well, really only Now since
Then
always passes away.

(*their proud mothers stand behind them / eyes straight ahead)

 

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The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive by Vanessa Libertad Garcia is a collection of short stories and poems interwoven into a gripping narrative that follows a group of gay & lesbian Latino club kids during the course of the 2008 presidential elections. As they plunge deep into the agonizing lows of anxiety and addiction, we see how they affect and are affected by the national politics happening around them.

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