JESSIE JOY’S COMPLAINT by Ken Anderson

You elbowed in, like a crook— a gun tucked 

under your coat. You stripped to your shorts 

and fed me my cue, but one small detail knocked it all

askew. “Turn off the light,” you ordered, cross,

no romantic fool. I aroused one stiff little flame

in the kitchenette just to follow, if not pursue, the affair. 

For your deep, dark secret had gathered itself

into something big and bent I couldn’t face 

nor use, though I’ve borne the wrench

of more crooked bastards. I could turn only my hand

to you, like a knob, but not to a door I’d dare

to open. You felt wrong as if touch had warped

as vision could with a mote. You needed a mercy job, the foil

of my calling. Of course, such scruples failed

to fit the part, but you weren’t straight. A true man, no.

You could not plumb me true. Broke, however, 

I charged what you had and got down 

to business, halfway curious, I must admit, 

to take such a monster in. Even there, the taste

of ugliness would be ugly, yes, ugly as sin. You wallowed

in me, wild and unwieldy, but never quite managed 

to fully employ me, like most. What an odd road

for blood to travel. Thrills must’ve swerved. O pirate, 

how you’ll miss me with your hook. I’ll trade another night,

as vowed, for neither love nor cash.

'

Ken Anderson’s poetry books are The Intense Lover and Permanent Gardens. Publications include Better than Starbucks, Café Review, Club Plum, Coffin Bell, Dash, Dawntreader, Free Verse Revolution, Harvest (Quillkeepers Press), Hole in the Head Review, Hyacinth Review, Impostor, The Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, London Grip, Lotus-eater, Lullwater Review, Modern Literature, Nebo, Neologism Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Orbis, Penumbra, Rudderless Mariner Poetry, Sangam Literary Magazine, Sein und Werden, SurVision, Toho Journal, Verbal Art, The Waiting Room, and Willawa Journal.