Come Out Tonight

Forecast in chrome and plastic, tyrants breathing out oil, slavery, planet hunger versions of Jackie-O. Sherry, Sherry, baby, won't you come out tonight?

And the stars whisper like old blood at the edges of the body of night. She stood with one hand on the phone for four hours, poised as only a few seconds had passed. I watched her through the crack between the shade and the sill. She waited for a forecast in human trembling, together with other important women. Come, come, come out tonight.

The world suffers for her. The clock hurries like a terrified animal and stops, dribbling saliva. She is eating chicken pie and bubble gum. For a month the Luftwaffe lived on raisins, same with the French after the war. Jackie-O received fresh oranges from John Kennedy.

Silly girl! She can not put down the telephone receiver. She is waiting to receive my body of work. She wants to take it in her ear. A modeled flush builds under her cheeks. She eats Christmas candy while she waits. The telephone rings and rings. I am not at home. I am with Jackie-O. We are eating oranges from the President. We are alone on the roof of a Park Avenue penthouse. Picture of Marilyn Monroe in my back pocket, molded by heat and sweat to the shape of my buttocks.

You are gripping the phone, smiling, eating candy, crying, "I am with the important women now." I am secretly an important man. Hang up the phone, I can't dance with you anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie-O. She will be taking it in the ear, my body of work. In the planetarium, you will receive a forecast: I will always be more important than you. You will never be important enough. You will never be on the repent end of slavery, never be the one to wield hunger against humanity. Heaven will never be an extension of your body. Your body will always belong to someone else.

The picture of Marilyn Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me, shaped like my ass. The sky is filled with oranges during the war. We eat them. The President is alone in a room. He is unimportant. As we eat his oranges the sky grows blacker. The moon ripens and turns red. It rots and is swallowed by the darkness. You are still by the phone. It is ringing and ringing, dead. Sherry, Sherry, baby, won't you come out tonight?

It is completely dark. The earth freezes. You put down the receiver and go to the window. Come, come, come out tonight.