Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jillian Sep 2017
I cannot stop ordering gimlets
******* Gimlets
Each time I'm reminded of the first time I tried yours
“Its gin lemonade,” you would say
I hated gin but decided to try it anyway
With a smile like that
How could I not?
I liked it
I really liked it
I liked it the way I loved you
Slowly to start but then all at once

Here I am tonight
At a different bar with someone else
Still ordering ******* gimlets
Lost to backdrops scrolling past,
She sits knitting
in the carriage of a train.
The vague needles
They scintillate and glimpse
With the cadence of the wheels –
Upbeating ceaselessly.

Strips of tiny loops
And eyelets like dewdrops
Of condensation
Grouped on the superior rim.

Once in a while,
She gives a heave
To loosen more yarn from the skein
Of Filipino-made wool,
brushed worsted weave.
Spun and carded
from the richest fleece,
Deeper in the wicker basket by her feet.

The needles flash,
With ancient rhythms and attack
Of duellists in their chainmail coats.
With little hesitation she can tack
From plain to purl to blackberry.
Count back by rote or slip a stitch
While the fish-eyed gimlets gleam.

All gather profusely in her lap,
As windfall trove, rich-patterned
And warm with peach-fuzz nap,
All crafted from a single line of yarn.
Marvels fall continuously from wise
Spell-binding hands and all is well for now.

(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)
Laura Sep 2013
She’s a burning, beautiful, ****** tease.  When she runs her hands over my abdomen, she breaks everything familiar to me into complicated shards. My only plans were to study with the other Molly. Then she shows up, coiling herself around anyone next to her, jokes about ***, waits for me to finish homework so we can go to Nomad, says “can we pretend to be lesbians tonight?” I said “I guess”, but I’m thinking “what? Really?” A ******* tease.  She lights two cigarettes and slips the extra one out of her mouth and gives it to me. She talks to Jason, and I find a beautifully attractive 36 year old named Miles.  I let Miles run his hands down my back, then I let Molly have a turn. It goes back and forth. I’m so torn between his cute glasses and sweater, and her wild hair, and long black skirt. But Molly’s also got her dangerous eyes. The ***** gimlets came out again, and she tries to teach me how to salsa. Grabbing me tight: “I go back, you go forward, we meet in the middle”. Then as if there were a timer in them, her hands dive for me, all over me, wonderfully everywhere. Her hand slips down my shirt, but that is another tease. Her other hand pulls my shirt down off my skin, but I stop her out of instinct. She decorates my cheeks with the longest lasting kisses. She blows in my ear. She asks, “Are you uncomfortable?” I say, “No. are you?” But I’m trembling below. She hands me to Miles again, and I watch her lips eat up another guy, while he goes farther and farther up my skirt. I let Miles’s hands be rough. I let him kiss me, and then pull him outside so we can interrupt them. She says, “You speak Russian to him, I’ll speak French.” Foreign words loft from her mouth like cigarette smoke. Miles leaves after I refuse to go home with him. Molly gives the guy her number, takes my hand and drives me home. I say “so you’re getting laid tonight, I’m going home alone. Again. Alone again.” She says, “What if he doesn’t text me? Then I’m all yours.” I don’t expect her to follow me inside, but she does. I put the kitten in her arms, she says “where’s your room?” and we fall on the bed. Nothing ever escalates from careful strumming of fingers on skin. But when I complain about getting no *** again, she starts to speaking words that are sexually vicious.  “Well, we’re both wet. I’ll tell Miles how you like to be touched when I’m gone. I’ll tell him–[in her German accent]-how you’d like to be spread open.” Her hair is still wild and gorgeous, and I run my hands through it once. She’s wrapped in a vintage plaid coat. Then she leaves. Says she’s tired. Hugs me, bites my ear, and says she loves me. And by standards of a miracle, I was not left alone feeling miserable. But now I have to do something about her.

If you’re going to tempt me like that, then I’m not letting go of you until I get what I want. Or more likely: “Molly, I really like guys but then there’s you. You show up, and your hands explore more and more of me, but you always stop an inch before you’ve gotten to all of me. Molly, congrats, you’ve got this control over me now. Why don’t you take it further? It doesn’t have to mean anything. We don’t have to tell anyone. If you don’t, you’ll have to watch me go ******* crazy. You drive me. Crazy.
244

It is easy to work when the soul is at play—
But when the soul is in pain—
The hearing him put his playthings up
Makes work difficult—then—

It is simple, to ache in the Bone, or the Rind—
But Gimlets—among the nerve—
Mangle daintier—terribler—
Like a Panter in the Glove—
Callum K Oct 2015
He's out there right now,
In some other place,
Another street or city or state,
Another girl's bed or another guy's couch,
Wondering what he's missing.

She's out there waiting,
Drinking coffee or tea,
Or iced ***** Gimlets,
Poetry tattooed across her arm,
Needy hearts drawn across her notebook.

You'll meet at a bar,
Lonely souls craving contact,
Awkward hellos and quiet flirtations,
Free drinks from him and a phone number from her,
Your wedding is next fall.
Third Eye Candy Sep 2020
Now imagine this.
You have all day to get somewhere
but you haven’t any goldfish…
And that makes you king of the world.
but you can’t lance the boil until
you abdicate the throne of Yarn
and bind a cat to your shadows’ pearl.
The black thing you carry in your pocket
is the eye of all Typhoons
in your lap.

Imagine opening your eyes-
and being surrounded by Thursday!
So much velvet tinkering with grey things
and gimlets… torchlit fantasies slurry forth
in an unending tide of appetites
disguised as appetites
in disguise.
Sunspots on paper plates
and taffeta medallions
all in love with blue cranes
and very little else
that you lack.

Imagine that.

— The End —