Challenge exercise. Include the following trigger in a poem.
With him, it was never the night before, never his charlatan past.
Charlatan Past
You claim you were born in Cerreto,
in Italy;
I believe you--I'm not ignorant
just lustful.
I recall us hiking, and you toss off,
"My childhood was on the mountain banks."
I get the pun you think you own, I almost
scorch your ego but your
delicious lips swig water, my breasts urge
to become the canteen.
"He told me he could read seven languages,
including Croation." My girlfriend is flushed. "He
had a book in Croation. He read me a poem. Of
course,
I can't read Croation."
"I can," I state, which flatlines her heart. "He can't."
Another day she prompts "Is he
good?"
I ponder that one. I make a list of his assertions:
* He used to work for Microsoft, in research
* His grandfather taught him to fly a biplane
* The ocean has mostly blind fish
* Jesus was probably born in Ariel, not Bethlehem
* He learned to hold his breath from an Indian fakir
* If I ever get sick, call him first, doctors are idiots
"Why did you dump him?" she asks over peanut butter tarts.
"I got tired of sharing," I say.
She blushes, her fingers surround an invisible crotch, as if
I didn't know.
"I get it," she tells me a month later, post-Him. "I wrote in
my diary,
last night, 'He thinks I'm stupid. He didn't realize my dad
was a marine.'"
Alone with my pet frog, with my TV, my diary, my door mat, my pen,
I reread last month's entry:
"With him, it was never the night before, never his charlatan past."