View Archives by:

Poet
Date
 
  Archives
 

The Field

Charles Jensen

Where you still find cars with dorsal fins,
taillights glowing cat's-eye thin.

Such circular movements, for so long,
become steps of dance.

Here at The Field, hookers bend forward
on stalks of slender high heeled boots.

Where love and knives are still
sharing the same breath.

Agrado: she is a waste of good
rhinoplasty.

The movements of oil derricks in field—
a rocking pump.

Where lipstick smears after blood dries:
money travels light, travels first.

Agrado, a waste of good
rhinoplasty. The eye begins to swell.

Manuela—a kind of nurse—arrives,
shooing men like plague rats.

The smell of body fluid: coppery,
bleachy clean. A place of shivered groans.

There is night. There are the hookers
about to drop from their shoes, fake blushes—

at dawn, each man goes home alone, a snake
of taillights uncoiling on the long, gray road.

Manuela arrives—nurse mother, wrenching
some poor high heel from the soft soil.

The girls titter back home, flatten out wads
of crumbled pesetas to buy their eggs, maybe a coffee.



Charles Jensen

Read Bio

Author Discusses Poems