Even When I Listen, I'm Lying Poem by Hala Alyan

How many men have I taken. Swung from the tips of my fingers. Led to a lake of silk-wet sheets. The lovers of gasoline, brick dust, the zenith of this twenty-ninth year. Their hair plastered with late rain. In a red pickup I sit with a black-haired woman who calls me mama, let myself believe her talk of border-crossing, her gritty fingernails tapping my forearm. She tells me that she died on this day, in a past life where she was a curandera. The bartender kicked us out; I let her lips skim my earlobe. Yes, I am domestic. I love my husband like a fire loves Californian brush. But there is nothing like two women quick as jaguars in the Texan dark, our madness catching up to us