Excerpts from Home in Three days. Don't Wash.
By Linda Smukler

Days Inn

It was astonishing to walk into room 233 at the Days Inn  /  the door open for us  /  to turn on the lights and to close the curtains  /  to see you first locked into that tan recliner as I sat on the (slightly darker) tan carpet  /  my back up against the coarse blue bedspread  /  to smell disinfectant and to drink bitter tea  /  to feel the minutes of our short afternoon slip away into nervousness and the prints on the off-white walls  /  then how you lay down on the bed  /  and I lay next to you  /  to kiss  /  no to talk  /  to get comfortable with each other again  /  we heard raised voices from somewhere / from the side or overhead  /  we couldn't figure out where  /  perhaps a meeting or ten TVs  /  screaming children or a gathering of boys to watch the football game  /  these were all possibilities as gradually the voices got so loud I called the front desk to complain  /  the desk clerk said the voices were coming from below something religious for sure  /  evangelists or a revival meeting  /  I told the clerk that I would call her back if we needed to move / then you asked me to turn off the hard lights and I did and lay back down next to you and then on top of you and I finally forgave myself for letting you wait at the train station  /  I remember you turned me over and how delirious I became at your touch and at a certain point I was overwhelmed with the desire to enter you and all the while beneath us they called on the Lord / they called for salvation  /  the desk called and out of breath I answered and said we were fine and did not want to move and it was true  /  the room had become as if lighted by candles and we lay on a sacred bier accompanied by hosannas and hallelujahs  /  and the chalice of your scent the icon of your face  /  the idols of your breasts in black lace  /  the staff of your finger in my ass and my cock in your cunt  /  our coming joined from below by shouts and applause and the exalted blessings of the possessed

Napoleon to Josephine

I am driving to you and I will drive all the way to New York / through the long round of the earth the plains / the wheat / through the hills of Ohio and the darkening cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Trenton / don't wash / I am listening to music loud / I can't stop / I am driving right into you with my foot my heart my fist / the faster I go the closer I am to you / I only slow down for police cars hidden behind the corners of the highway / behind well-placed trees and planned hillocks / I won the last battle / I won in all my short and skinny frame / at least 1500 hearts / because of you they saw me / because of you they saw what I have to offer / they cried in ecstacy when I tore off their clothes / they cried when I sliced open their throats / they cried when they saw everything I can give you / they wanted my hardness the curl of my lip / they wanted the murderer in me / don't wash / I want a weeks worth of you wet / I want the same underwear the same sour smell / layers of it thick / the soak and musk of you / I too am acquiring mud and the scum of desire / my cock has not come down yet from thinking about you / through the entire days of battle don't wash / it's becoming night now / I see pinks and blue a deer by the side of the road / I'm driving south now into the constant drench of you the earth on my left shoulder / don't wash don't wash the books out of your hands / don't wash the telephone you've held between your chin and my mouth / don't wash away the meal you had this morning the orange juice on your chin / don't wash the history of the breaths you have taken in my absence out of your mouth / I want to know them / all the churches and all the stores smell me as I go by / they smell my desire and the force of my lips / they smell how I hold my breath the inside of your shoes / that white layer now at the fold where your thigh touches your labia that punk / your hair matted waiting / wait that long that much / I want you not to move and therefore not to live except to feel the force of my hand on your forehead / around your jaw / taste my mouth / yellow lines / white lines / a horse in the road / I am not tired / I will drive through the night / I will not eat / the dirt still caked around my fingernails / this is what they want all of them / they smell what happens with you / that I a woman / have something to offer a woman that I have something to take her with / do not wash / you will crawl over me / with the mud of your days / with all the slime and smell and wild leaves of them / and I will fill myself on the sourness of your ass and your cunt as they ride between my thumb and forefinger / I will lick you clean / all of that will be mine / I have fasted for days waiting

Finally / I will wash you and you will rise out of the bath / sweet smelling / to sleep and wake again / perhaps you will wake to tell me how much I stink because I have not washed even longer than you you will say: / you think you can come in here looking like that? / you think you can come in here with the blood of all those women on your hands? you think that you can tear apart the world and then come to tear me apart? / you think that you can seduce everyone with your words and then come and ravish me? / no / not now / not with your stinking lousy little man self / how small you are / how thin how unbelievably proud / how wretched / those arms couldn't fuck a pigeon / could they? / those lights / that stop sign / this fork in the road / you would have me? / how could you walk into our house this way?

Starvation

I thought about the morning and waking up for you to see me older and lined perhaps that is why I left your hotel room so early / 3:42 a.m. / I was tired and cold and wanted to get under the covers of your bed but did not want to wake you / perhaps that was too intimate a gesture for what we had done and what we had done was not the intimacy of early mornings or the light of aging faces or a quiet sleep in each other's arms / we accomplished something else of course and I did kiss you on the head and smelled my fingers full of you / and maybe it was better that I left and walked through the yellow-lighted halls of your floor / a renovation in progress / walls half-painted and torn with room numbers taped crookedly onto doors / ceiling lights and wires hanging down claw-like and scraped your nightmare you said / details / you see I remember / I remember how I walked into the elevators wondering if my clothes were all on and zippered and buttoned in case I met someone / I did not meet anyone / even on my already renovated floor / was I now renovated too as I entered my room quietly without lights so as not to wake my sleeping roommate? / as I lay tossing on my bed with the smell of you? / with the fact that I did not come and wanted you again and how starved I must be when I saw you the next day you ompletely distracted me from what I had to do / and now it is two weeks and your package came today and I held it with the rest of the mail against my chest and pushed it up the stairs of the deck with me behind as I might hold your back to my chest and push you forward up and into my house through the living room and onto the bed I am starved / although I do not want to eat / starved when I turned the radio off in the car and felt your head in my lap / starved / when I try to pray my fingers are your fingers on the back of my neck

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