Love Poem: Pool Table Felt On the Bloodstained Mattress
Jeff Reed Avatar
Written by: Jeff Reed

Pool Table Felt On the Bloodstained Mattress

Pool Table Felt on the Bloodstained Mattress

A quiet giggle
It’s not my stomach growling, “feed me.”
A young girl who wouldn’t love a millionaire
A stereo left on overnight
Warmed motor that melts a plastic beer cup
Teeth brushed a thousand times
A smile passed the darkness when we went to bed

What do you think about when we try to go to sleep?
A toenail scratches the bed post
A cold metal spring
A maturing woman who never loved a lawyer
Who joked about being a poet
A glass of warmed water with a comb soaking in it
Specs of dust on books underneath a hanging
Spider plant

I ask if she’s still awake
She mumbles to me to go to sleep
A paintless lady with metal breasts
And numb fingers, because she sits on them
To keep warm
A straggling mustache scratches a kissing lip
Blue wine, cheese rots away like a heart
Cut from a young boy’s stomach
Left drying on a piece of oak board

I try to keep her green eyelids open
With vice grips, with warmer hands
With veins she can plainly see in my feet
Red snakes crawling out of grass-haired legs
A note left on the door:
“I couldn’t sleep with you so I went upstairs and 
Puked into a cardboard barrel.”

“It’s not important…
I mean if I stay here or not.”
A sticker bumped on her door
Peeled away like skin of a sunburned shoulder
A dream:  An oily faced dog humps a bed post.
Pieces of grass caught in my teeth
I tried to puke my love for you out of my heart

A quiet giggle
It’s not my stomach growling “goodbye”
An older woman, she probably will never have grandchildren
An alarm clock winds down
A cold plastic lip on my nose
Kisses me a thousand times
A dream:  A smile passed inside of me when I stabbed her neckline
With silver
A jeweled letter opener.

A hot steam
Blue vapor when dog blood smothers a toenail
And an armpit and a dead crotch and
A purple tongue that wouldn’t love me.