Even on hands and knees No still means No,

so I pull out, bent over your shoulder,

kissing your scarred face. Half of your afro

never grew back from where your ex-lover,

a man you’d called pimp, had thrown the acid.

“Pumped a lot of tane down in New Orleans,”

Tina crooned on the record player. “Flood

me,” you’d say, meaning, “fuck me like we’re teens

again,” awash in cum. I’ve kissed each seam

in your flesh, the stitched space where your eye sat,

all your fused thew. Sometimes I can feel you

unclench around me, convulse, crash and scream.

Gimme safe, love, when, “nice and rough,” falls flat,

and Proud Mary’s, “nice and easy,” won’t do.

][][

Notes:

“Thew,” is an old-fashion term for muscles and tendons. As far as I can gather, “tane” is short for octane, or perhaps gasoline. In Ike and Tina Turner’s version of Proud Mary, Tina explains, “We never ever do nothing/ nice and easy./ We always do it nice and rough,” which is fabulous, unless one’s PTSD gets in the way. We’re all works in progress, I suppose.