On the Forest Trail
Let's workshop this poem about forbidden love
For an updated version, see: https://maistvanjr.substack.com/p/on-the-forest-trail-round-2 On the Forest Trail 1 Even by our high school years her life’s purpose was to gather up sweets and glom them down in those places hidden from the fat chance of a parental eye: under the piss-ringed and forever sheet-less mattress from which the bull-neck would bounce so high that the fan blade would catch her great round face; in the closet ripping out cat shit crusted in the shag, gobbling it up while eyeing me with those cross-eyes— far-set, up-slanted—beneath self-scissored bangs; in the drainage pipe that passed under our street through which would course the winter-melt stream that she would dunk her big head in for my reaction; under the sleeping-bum overpass among the discarded 40s that we would smash and stomp once she downed their slosh, her tongue protruding more than usual as she gimped about neck-less in drooling concentration.—All these times, images, savored but for a moment, superimposed as they so quickly were by more, and more. 2 How good it was not having to think or speak, hiking the forest trail with her; her sour musk of mouse droppings warm on my side; she in her element among the ahistorical, appearing each moment exactly how she is, as honest as the mouth-breathing goldfish, tied as she was so close, angel-close, to the peg of the moment— no expectation of Christmas ever showing itself in those deep inset eyes below a Frida Kahlo stripe. Who has never envied such a short leash— that of the low and receding browed, clouded in larval imbecility? How good it was not having to coax her, coax her into enjoying, into seeing the innocence of, me pistoning out— head to hilt, head to hilt, beyond head to hilt— that rotten gourd’s every horse-foam hole: that shitty asshole and pissy pussy; that mouth replete with rows of rotten teeth, its cracked lips chocolate-crusted at the corners. No sound but that of one shaving-cream hand clapping itself—that, intermingled with giggles and her boar-grunts, the crinkling of the leaves, the ruffling of her uncanny windbreaker. 3 Pink, faded, too large, secondhand—to this day it haunts me, that windbreaker. I picture her still wearing it, there in that facility where she is still likely to spaz out when it is removed for washing— where by now she might have died. It—the vivacious image of it— is what has my wife and children, my co-workers, wondering where I am, where I have suddenly gone. It is what tells me how gutless and sick I was and still am, letting concern with how others perceive me come before love.
*This poverty poem, which concerns the ways in which a “neurotypical” man has mistreated a Down’s-Syndrome girl as a result of his own shame for loving her, originally appeared in Matador Review in 2016: http://www.matadorreview.com/ma-istvan-jr.
Photo credit: Sheridan N. Mills (flickr.com/photos/lmillsphotography/)