Your Ex-Girlfriend

is singing “A Sunday Kind of Love”

under our window,

toneless as a mule,    

rolling each r in her native Cuban,

a wild  hum of drums.

It is Saturday,

and already I hate

her arrogant snub of time, the way

she holds the word “love”

in her throat like a life-vest.

I walk to the sink,

gather two of our heaviest pots

and man the screen like a sharp-shooter,

daring her to the refrain.

You are amused, invite her

for supper.

She’s upstairs in a knee-

jerk, as if with the tall loom

of your voice she could levitate,

grow wings.  

At our table

She sits, docile

as a dove and handles

her iced tea as if it were a gift,  reels

the week’s events in a violent sputtering

of lips: a man found in the sewer

unscathed, the heat wave

that’s claimed  life

every year since ’89.

I snarl into my frijoles negros,

(your request: to make her feel

more comfortable ),

though in my thigh, the stray poke

of chair.

Hot and unhinged,

I bang the kitchen hapless,

swatting the stove with spatula,

denting the oven’s

metal back.

She rises as if charmed,

joins; rips the toaster

from its oily plug, stabs her spiked

pump into the tile, decapitates

the blender.

Soon, we are both wet

with frenzy.   You smile

from your place

at the table’s head,

grip your gin with all the gloat

of a general,

kick-back:

“Oh ladies,” you say,

“Oh girls.”

Lauren Fanelli is a student at American University.