Lucy Wainger
Mysterious Skin
after Gregg Araki
Here is the town of lost basements and raped boys
and aliens mistaken for angels. / Here is the way you will learn
to run: / covered in hands / rolling like a dog in the snow
he tells you that there are nosebleeds / he tells you
that you are on your own / alone in this beauty.
You are learning that it is not as simple as wanting to die in a motel
versus wanting to live / to swallow cum in a shower in a motel
that there are other factors / other names / but now you’re soaking
in the bleach-colored headlights and taking off down the road
forgetting how well you know these parts / of town
how well they know your name. There’s nothing left here to use
as kindling / bodies too damp / left outside during the storm.
Here’s where a man clutched you with his fat fingers / like
fish / here’s where the boy told he heard the voice of God
but you didn’t hear it / you were enraptured with the movie
and the sound of his jeans / rustling
Lucy Wainger’s poems have appeared in SOFTBLOW, The James Franco Review, The Blueshift Journal, Black & BLUE, Winter Tangerine Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She has attended summer writing workshops at UVa and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and will graduate from Stuyvesant High School in 2016. She lives in New York City.
This poem is not previously published.