Poetry Friday: the word is “PACKAGE”

Of COURSE I’d think dirty! It’s ME! MONA! You can’t slide a word like ‘package’ across my desk and expect me to think of brown paper packages tied up with string, can ya? Unless they’re carried by a naked man, that is. (Thank you, Gypsy, for inspiring such dirty thoughts!)

Today for Poetry Friday, your mission, should you choose to accept it (and NO, I refuse to see Tom “Freak” Cruise in M.I. III), is to be creative with the word ‘package’. Write a poem, post a photo, do an audio blog, interpretive dance, whatever grabs your tingly bits today. Fly! Be free!

I have three submissions today, which may get edited, esp. the last one. The boss is demanding my time. Ah, such is life! Have a good weekend, y'all!


Brown’s Package

What can Brown do for me?
I’m glad you asked.

I need you
(badly)
to park that brown behemoth
outside my house,
I want to hear the brakes squeal as you
rushtomydoor.
Turn off the blinkers, man
You’ll be a while on this delivery.

I need you
(dripping)
to slide out of the driver seat
legs first
your muscular thighs
muscular calves
teasing me, taunting,
butterflied stomach, and ooh, the tingling

I need you
(throbbing)
to hold my delivery
package
wrapped in brown
so easily undone
ring my doorbell
smile and do that one-eyebrow-cocked thing

I need you
(come in)



Five Minute Free Write

That’s how twisted I’ve become, package to me now means something sexual and something I want to handle, to fondle, something with a zipper instead of something in sparkly birthday paper, instead of a box of Christmas now, I remember a package, a certain package, that was the most surprising and most joyful package I ever received. My Aunt Lily lived far away, and for Christmas we’d get a card from her, but one year, one fantastic year, when I was seven or so, Aunt Lily sent my brother and me each a package. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and I’ll always remember the string, because I thouglt we should save it for kites for spring, but mom cut it and said ‘string is cheap’, and threw it away. We tore the brown paper off, and the red-gold holiday paper, and were each left holding a box of wonderful, imported, different and sugary cookies. Cookies! For a present! The rule in the house was, if it’s your present, you get to have it until you’re done, and then you could share. Well, why should cookies be any different?! The lids were cardboard-edged, with the entirety of the top a see-through cellophane, and for a brief moment we oohed and aaahed at the jelly-filled german cookies, the pressed chocolate cookies, the coconut macaroons, the wee powdered sugar cookies studded with nuts. Somewhere in the background we heard our mother talking, but we couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying because our ears were filled with cookies, our mouths, our faces, stuffed with sugary goodness, the best ever present on the best ever day, the only



The Package

Incredibly long.
The line at the post office at holiday time, at Hanukkah and Christmas and Solstice, is always incredibly long.
I cursed myself red and sweaty for lack of foresight, for wanting to please my youngest brother in Colorado, who never sends thank you notes anyway.
Did he even realize how long I had to search for that damn book that not even Amazon carries?
That I hunted eBay for three months?
He’d better damn well appreciate this.

Three windows open. That’s all they had. Three windows. Hey Mister Postman, it’s not like we’re all pissed off or anything, but you might want to get your supervisor up here and make HIM weigh my package, ‘cause talk about going postal? Man, you ain’t seen MY postal, is all I’m sayin’.

“They could at least serve us hors d’oeuvres at this party,” said the guy behind me.

“Yeah, and champagne with a little ‘hurry up’ in it,” my sarcastic mouth agreed. I turned to share a smirk with him, and my face froze, in that stupid awe and amazement you feel when you find yourself eye-locked with Hey Good Lookin’.

He smelled incredible. I recognized the scent, something far-away and college, expensive, a gift from Grandma that now he bought for himself. That cologne always got me hot, that guy Russell I dated always smelled like that, we’d fuck like frantic rabbits whenever he splashed that stuff on, I’d walk around the rest of the day smelling like his cologne and salty wet sex.

He was still smiling. There was something about his eyes, the way they crinkled, the fierceness of the blue, that locked me.

“Couches.”, he offered. “They need couches.”

“A coat-check”, I said, as I unbuttoned my black wool winter coat and fanned myself with the folds.

“Massages?” he grinned.

“Yes, please!”

I was glad he giggled when I did. I hoped we weren’t too loud. Too obviously flirting. I was supposed to meet my boyfriend in half an hour, but he knows I flirt, and anyhow, how often do I get to make chit-chat with an Adonis-god?

“Whole Body up the street does great massage, have you ever been?”, he asked.

“Oh yeah, couple-a times. That one girl, Dianne, is great, she really digs in there. It hurts, but it hurts good, y’know?”

“I know…I used to date her.”

He used to date a masseuse. Great. I have hands like small meatloaves, I can’t even massage my own scalp. Check this guy off my list.

“USED to…broke up. She was a little…uh…rough, y’know, she didn’t mean to, but that and the fact that her hands were on naked men all day, well, that was….”

“NEXT!”

The line shuffled forward but my feet didn’t. The guy and me, we bumped, sort of "tripping with style". He caught me around the waist just as my left leg remembered how to move, and we stumbled to a crazy diagonal pitch. I don’t know how we held onto our packages, I really don’t.

“Whoa!”, he said, as those crazy blue eyes popped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, oh yeah, I guess I’ve been standing here so long I forgot how to move!”

His hand lay at my waist. I didn’t remove it, and neither did he.

He looked at me with those goddamn blue eyes. His face got, I dunno, younger all of a sudden, and he took a couple breaths and said, “The…uh…that place next door, the bakery, has baklava and really good coffee. Can I, uh, not to be too forward, and I’m not a serial killer or anything, but, y’know, if you have time, we can talk more about massage, or not!, I mean, probably not, but we could sit down and, oh, y’know, relax. It’s a good time to relax. Crazy, crazy time, y’know?”

“I know.”, I smiled. “M’kay.”

My boyfriend knows I flirt.

I just kept telling myself that.

Merry Christmas to me.