Putty (W.H.)

You are touchingly walleyed, 
your wobbly pupils peering out through the holes

in your stretched-out rubber mask of a face.

You brush a few limp strands of your raven feather wig

from your chalky forehead.Your skin, 
hanging loose on your skull, reminds me 
of my earliest nightmare, in which 
my mother stood at the kitchen sink,

her face turning to white paste

and dripping into the sudsy dishwater.

My most recent bad dream was just last night. 

I was trying to buy religious icons from a South Philadelphia shrine

with paper money that turned out to be a wad 
of elaborately etched counterfeit twenty-four-dollar bills.

I don’t know why it was so horrifying, but I awoke in a cold sweat. 
The night before it was Whitney Houston, or rather,
a cake molded to look like her, in a red strapless dress
and frosted crimson lips.

My apologies; it’s true what they say, there's nothing quite so boring

as someone else’s dreams. 
Don’t leave, though. Frightening though your features may be, 
I’m still mad for your lazy gyrations,

your scuffed pumps and bunched stockings, 
and I will flick crumpled twenty-four dollar bills at you

to flutter at your painted toes all evening

even if I’m certain any words we say to each other

will plop to the floor, where we will probably slip on them.

Oh, hell, I’m no good at small talk. I'm smitten with you.

I'll follow you anywhere you go, join in on whatever

harebrained crime spree you plot for us.

If you want, baby, I’ll even try my best to become a character in
your favorite recurring nightmare.