Poetry by David Melville

                Bibay Cordero CC



​What It’s About

Walrus-waisted, the waitress 
led us to our places, 
white plastic placemats 
splattered with gravy,
butter crusts, other gray matter. 
She wiped twice and left.  
Mary Beth sat on my lap, 
eighteen, flat-chested 
as a Rand McNally map.  
We ordered cokes, fiddled straws.
I was drinking
green eyes when she shifted
to the other side of the booth:
“The hokey pokey.  It scares me.”

“Babe, next time I’ll heat the truck.”
“But it scares me.”
“Someday when you’ve a ring 
we’ll do it in a real bed.”   
“Yes,” she said, “but it frightens.” 

“My feelings,” I said, “you know 
they’re hot as a barn fire,
fiery like I fessed when we was 
parked by the bridge,
so hot that crick water
won’t put them out.”  

“What if,” she said, “what if,
that’s what it’s all about?” 

“Put it in,” I hummed: 
“Shake it all about.”  
“Ain’t you listening?” 
“You know I is.”

“Rolling on your seat, fooling 
in that truck, 
knocked up, plop a few out, 
what if that’s it?  There ain’t
nothing else?”    

The waitress waddled 
back with burgers – 
hair like drier lint, 
apron hanging.
Mary Beth watched her saunter off,
forehead crinkling 
like our fries.  “What if
I, me, someday look
like that?  Waitressing here, 
kid-raising.  Dwaine, 
that ain’t no kind of life.”

Glint of moss-green eyes.  
My heart went tumbling out, 
made off, tumbling 
like crick water, flipping
over stones, whipping 
under creosote, bubbling 
past bridge planks, splashing off.  
My heart gurgled on those
moss stones.  

“So much hay rolling’s
coming your way, Mary Beth.
Me, some other fella, 
fellas of all kinds,
big, short, skinny, fat,
lined up here to Dallas.  So much
loving’s heading your way 
you won’t care one fig 
when you get pear-hipped,
milky eyed.   Might be 
why sagging happens.  
Bodies start out tight.  
Lovin’s what loosens them up.  
Droops are drops of life.”

She soaked a fry 
dabbed it up red,
liquidy as my heart.  
“Me,” I says, “I ain’t got nothing 
on the hokey pokey.”  

She hopped back on my lap, 
poked a fry between my lip, 
fingered my string tie.  
She hummed, bubbling 
like crick water.

“Loving,” she smiled, 
“that’s what it’s all about.”  
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David Melville's recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, Water~Stone Review, RHINO, Kosmos Quarterly, The Road Not Taken, and The Lyric.  His work has also been anthologized in the college textbook Listening to Poetry:  An Introduction for Readers and Writers (2019).  He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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