Heat-Stroke

Lust walks coolly by as you step from the corner onto the street, her

denim-clad legs rasping against each other with each strutting

step, her beaten Adidases moving in perfect rhythm.

Her broad hips slide and slope, and the line of her breasts

pushes against the tautness of her t-shirt; her hair

bounces in its sleek ponytail. She is short, with fierce eyes and a large ass,

and everything about her is the air of tightness, the air of sirens, the praying

mantis queen. She looks at you, her eyes meeting your like hookers

meeting a John, the clean shaven one in a charcoal-gray suit

with a briefcase in his hand—

(hungry gropings in the backseat of your dad’s Volvo with the redhead whose name you don’t remember going down on your wife before she was your wife in the master bedroom during your boss’s Christmas party driving down that dark street to paypaypay to be tied up and spanked by one of the underaged girls in satin and fishnets masturbating into your mother-in-law’s fishtank)

-- and she dismisses you.

She passes you with a grin that makes young boys pitch erections

and prepubescent girls squirm uncomfortably in their panties, and you

feel crest-fallen, and there’s nothing to be done about it.