Susan Rooke
This incident is a memory I’ve been chewing on for a long time, and I’ve written several poems about it. None of them quite expressed what I’d been itching to say about all the sort of exotic, yet deeply cheesy, disgusting aspects of the experience. Until now. With the epistolary form, I found my voice. It’s the ideal method of address for confronting the loathsome (and for rubbing the loathsome’s aquiline nose in it).
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An Open Letter in the Online Personals
To Carlos at Teotihuacan: Remember this?
I, climbing the Pyramid of the Sun
to its hot, windy summit, wearing
freckles and a flowered dress,
alone, looking sacrificial.
You, Aztec CPA, stocky,
thick wallet, mounting
the sheer steps behind like a goat,
more than twice my age.
I, piquing your interest, only twelve.
You, urgent and attentive,
gripping my hand, guiding me
intact back down the fatal stone
face, giving me at the bottom
to my mother and her lover.
The three of you, laughing
in relief, as if you’d rescued me.
I, cringing ingrate, dreading
the date you insisted on that night.
The four of us, after awkward dining,
a little dancing, shifting foot-to-foot
by the elevator bank as
the doors gasped, sprang apart.
You, leaning in to kiss
a grudging cheek, waving us goodbye,
hanging back to pay the tab.
I, with my flesh-peddlers, descending
to street level, hailing a cab.
I, trembling to be once more
on the sidewalks of Mexico City,
still unopened to the Aztec gods,
collapsing in the taxi.
You, Carlos, and your chocolate-smooth
voice, never heard from again.
Thank you for that.
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Susan Rooke lives in Austin, Texas. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Eye to the Telescope, Exit 13 Magazine, Texas Poetry Calendar, and Solo Novo. She edits the Austin Poetry Society’s monthly MuseLetter, and has just completed her first novel, a fantasy.