Nicelle Davis -  The Night Circe Cannot Remember

Drank too much. Bottle of Ambrosia down
my own. Remember burning in a corner,
like a hand was striking matches on the back
of my throat. Remember a panhandler said
to me that night drink has sunk more ships
than Neptune ever will—sounded like a line
a man’s taught to say for someone else—
especially seeing how drunk the messenger
was—so I ignored him and continued down.
Remember waking in a barn with a woman
screaming with my goat—the word intercourse
sounding like a thing she was taught to say
instead of fuck. What she meant to say is
fucked her goat. I have no way of knowing
if I didn’t—other than Penelope says I did.    

 




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Nicelle Davis lives in Southern California with her son J.J. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various publications, including Broadsided, Front Range, FuseLit, Moulin Review, ML Press, The New York Quarterly, Offending Adam, PANK, SLAB Magazine, Superficial Flesh, and Two Review. She’d like to acknowledge her poetry family at the University of California-Riverside and Antelope Valley Community College. She runs a free online poetry workshop at The Bees’ Knees Blog.