Christian Peet

THE GODDESS AS A PASSING THOUGHT

I hear her wailing, back from my dark bathroom or bedroom, meditating now sometimes two or three hours at a sitting. Stretching 'Ah, young Nicolette' I sigh, 'You nightmare. I was planning on a little Shakespeare but that's hopeless now.' Find the hole in the east window blind, line up my eye and watch her slide, black skirt caught beneath her but a moment. Pissy, patented pout. Kohl, mink, fishnets. Hammered gold choker. Swollen lips. One day a queen, the next a frigid victim shallow-breathing in a plowed snow bank wearing only a pearl necklace, drunk. Neglected, whining, though her faithful Chuck drives truck and shoots road movies, sweet, G-rated affairs for Nico and their lumpish son. 'New Orleans sounds like a hot time,' she moaned once, Chuck hours south with no phone call. 'Oh, I love big rigs,' I mused, 'My old Ford 350 had a roll bar, fat white sidepipes.' Yeah, right. What, I have Tourette's? 'My wife, she calls such joys boy toys, but once she rode a hog.' Silence. Then, 'You want to come inside?' New Years day, Chuck slogged outside and cried into a snow-gust, 'I see you too are forced to smoke outside. What's your wife's deal?' --'The same as yours,' I sighed. --'We're pussy-whipped!' he spat and then, hunched, visibly undone made like the Family Wagon needed wrenching Christian Peet is a Bennington graduate, winner of an Academy of American Poet's Prize, and a semester away from a Goddard MFA. Thus he has worked as a dishwasher/prepcook, carpenter's apprentice, sheetmetal fabricator, hired hand on a goat farm, maintenance man, landscaper, and convenience store clerk. His poems appear or are forthcoming in SFSU's Fourteen Hills, Burning Word, Coelacanth Magazine, Eclectica, Pig Iron Malt, and The Adirondack Review. Christian lives in Nooksack, Washington and can be reached at ranchproductions@hotmail.com.

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