3 Poems from Misti Rainwater-Lites

Dead Like Bacon



Most of the marriages around me are dead like

chewy not crispy bacon and I’m not talking

about the bacon you put in the goddamn

microwave I’m talking serious old school

skillet sizzling thick slab real pork not turkey

bacon here. Marriages are dead and not

fertilizing much of anything. Take Mark

his wife is beautiful the stuff of mythology

and I’m not talking about Medusa or Baba

fuckin’ Yaga. I’m talking Betty Boop but

with a smaller head. Mark’s wife is one

bodacious bitch but his hands were all

over my thighs as the three of us looked

up at the stars from the bed of my truck

and she was too spaced out on pineapple

wine coolers to notice. When it comes time

to find a lost jean jacket men get bitter

about it, though, bring up shit that has been

stewing in the pot since 1989 when Vanilla

Ice was all the rage and people were talking

about all the fun kinds of condom that could

be had for free if you were ballsy enough

to grab them from the basket. Women, petty

creatures that we are, get bitter about much

lesser things.



Saturday Night in Shitsville, USA

We was all just sittin' around the chickenshack shootin' the shit slammin' them moonshine shooters talkin' bout better days when stamps were licked and balls were kicked when a goddamn blaster worm screamed somethin' we no could decipher, somethin' bout how we is all a bunch of fuckin' sorry excuses for human beans.



My Lipstick on Her Left Tit


He was paying he was telling me
how wet her pussy was
and the music sucked
but she was eighteen
and on his lap and in my face
with her sweet soft tits
her abs you could balance
a tumbler of Maker's Mark on
so what else
would I do.



*coupon not valid outside The Arabic Emirates/purchase required/see back for details

Slugs and Soft Drinks

Taken by surprise I fell into the hole. Squishy membranes succeed the rush of blood I waded through. Warhol watches porn to my left, witches chant in tongues in another corridor. The blood flow slows.

A demon asks, “are you Jack Dilaudid?”

I shake my head. He grasps my hand with slimy soft drink cup hands. Slugs snag on my bare feet that smell of grated cheese and feces. Into a room he pushes me, the demon that looked like my father. Red in the eyes but under no narcotics.

In this vicious room, televisions are everywhere. I sit on a swollen couch, swollen with the stink of death. Blood stains are evident wherever my eyes go. Ugly women are at my feet, begging for my sickly penis. The penis of a dying dog in an alleyway sullen and lonely and fading fast.

From a door in the distance I could not see, an old white man appeared. He walked infallibly confident. Like a porn star's horse erection. Slimy and with a Texas born man’s strut. I thought it was God. I thought I had been wrong my whole life. All the drugs and the breaking of hearts and the disappointment that has been my life would be shown, reel by reel, a single frame at a time, a billion frames of sin, debauchery. The things that make legends.

I stare at him. He stares back as if to read my mind. I tried to extinguish the guilt beneath my blackened eyelids. Prophets come into your life once. This was my prophet. It had no wings. No halo. No golden light to lift me up. It was a crusty old white motherfucker that was here for my salvation. What I’ve hated in life has become my savior in hiding. The end.

But Jack will be back soon. I never stay away for too long.







Jeff Sibley is one sic fucka