Crowded, Naked in Bath Water

by Renee Brook Hogue

Cold carpet hugs your ass and you
wonder, captured in your own infidelity
that two could come so close to the
ambiguity that comes ringed in cold coffee mugs
and 5 am mornings without caffeine.
Your voice carols along street corners and old
hairy men stare at you in your stained blue jeans
worn muff and a new leather bra that doesn’t fit. 
Leather will not
stretch to a D cup, so you settled for an "unfit."
But you've got the look. . .
Like you settled for SoftScrub palms and itchy wool caps,
winter and textualized activism.
You dig under granite graveyards searching for your pulse in the dead
that now serve as fossil fuel for your faux fireplace.
Continuing to count the
flakes of dirt under your nails long
after you have left the rotting holes, while
bath water swells around mounds of flesh. You take your
pulse; still there.
Death like infidelity takes on performance qualities.
Blocking each kiss under the hot ellipsoidal lights,
director cuts to the next scene, scrapping the caress.
Your thighs took up to much of the shot ---
you, he says, are no Cindy Crawford.
Of course, you think, isn’t black patent leather
for everyone but me?