Anna Feng

a page from her book

on the taxi ride home, the Driver plays everybody wants to rule the world and sinks a marlboro cigarette in three drawn-out, pensive drinks / this is the fifth time alec has asked me to trust him / although i never did when my Older Sister taught me to list off names of subway stations to beat back sleep / the old man’s jaded performance of neil taylor’s guitar solo sedates me once more / when i begin losing consciousness at canal st. / alec calls me “maggie” and “bitch” in the same breath / like the chase bank billboards advertise a toilette for the modern woman and the “loosest” slot machines in the mid-atlantic on the same cheugy facade / i claw blisters off my feet and clench the stoned strap of my black dress until my nails turn milky / bottle Blonde in the car beside watches mortified / flesh draping her body like a sheet mask / excerpts from play it as it lays scrawled on her bones / i wish Alec never saw my skin folds slide past the tissue paper bodice and into my studio sanctum / where i stare at the ceiling half painted purple like my pedicure as he solicits in my kitchen, brewing coffee in his carhartts and opening cluttered cabinets / i unmoor my retainer overlooking west queens / at the Businessman squatting on the curbside, crumpling a chewed up tamale in one hand and wiping saliva with another / alec is curled in the corner of the air mattress, forging calculus homework with punchlines from big mouth and coddling his purring stomach like a stray cat / but for the first time this month, I write / a thank you note to joan didion for calling my mother back in six imperfect characters