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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3472 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention The Sainthood of Maria Milosz Jim Doss That Friday night at the Polish Club we danced the Beer Barrel Polka, and Moon over Warsaw. The band bounced like out of synch pistons dressed in green and red lederhosen as my hands slid dangerously low, her fingers roamed the valleys of my chest. Glasses of pilsner, blonder than Playboy bunnies, walked past us on trays to stroke grey mustaches, squeeze wallets. All around, grandfathers twirled granddaughters, mothers rehearsed steps with sons still trying to grow into their feet. This woman I barely knew burned her initials into my neck with kisses, whispered secrets— the money she stole from an aunt as a teenager, a former lover’s dysfunctions, her volunteer work with Allentown’s orphans. With no worldly accomplishments, I bragged about an unfinished novel, short stories piled high as smokestacks, the crazy dream of living in Key West to write full-time before a few bad lines of love poetry stumbled from my mouth. Then we left, hand in hand, for my room, where a warm bottle of wine waited. Our shoes fell side by side on the rug like split cocoons. Our clothes grew into a desert mountain, and I, lapsed Baptist, opened her Book of Light to immerse myself in the scripture, its tales of fire and revelation. |
