CarrollBlog 2.12

GOOD GIRL

by Kim Addonizio

Look at you, sitting there being good.

After two years you're still dying for a cigarette.

And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?

Don't you want to run to the corner right now

for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice

and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard

that you're so sick of staring out into

look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends

day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,

the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —

don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around

like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway,

always groveling for love and begging to be petted?

You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides

of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,

you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.

Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes

and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first

beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they

been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time

you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets

to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?

Sure it's time. You've rolled over long enough.

Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this

there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.

So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:

up and down the block your neighbors' dogs

burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.