ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
JO SONG
by Katherine A. Gleason

"An hundred year should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
Two hundred to adore each breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest."

That's Andrew Marvel.
Do you ever notice that no one talks about collarbones?
Collarbones and that little hollow between them that seems just made for a tongue--salty and sweet.

The other day I'm painting a house. The lady starts talking to me about shutters, trim, detailing. I'm looking at her collarbones and all I can say is, "That'll cost extra."

I used to go to the gym but all those girls in the locker room made me nervous. You know the way on women over forty the tendons in the neck start to stand out like cables on the Brooklyn Bridge. You can see the life running up and down them.

She has this vein in her neck right here. I know just how it would feel under my tongue. This isn't the lady with the house.

Someone I dated. She had her arms around my neck. I'm looking at that little vein. Between kisses she says she has a boyfriend. She kisses me again. I can't say anything. I just think, "That'll cost extra."

I can see where she parks her car from my kitchen window. The other night I saw her drive off for vacation with her expensive boyfriend. I stayed at the window watching.
She didn't come back.

I turned on the TV.
Re-runs.
Golden Girls.

Murphy Brown. Candice Bergen--she's got a nice live cabley neck. You know the one where they have Louis Malle on playing himself. His last line is--Thank god I'm not married to her. But of course he was. I wonder if he appreciated that neck, that hollow.

Designing Women came on. Cleavage but no collarbones.

It was two-three in the morning when I realized she never said good bye.