Men Who Read Mary Gaitskill #2

Men Who Read Mary Gaitskill #2

are guys who after some
kind of fashion are interested in
or engaged by questions of
estrangement but I’m unsure
as to whether it is Gaitskill’s
human alienation they are drawn
by or their own or whether there
is in fact a difference between the two
phenomenological phenomena
that is, is estrangement gendered?
I think Gaitskill would answer No
to that – then again, that could be because
I’m so estranged that I can’t recognise
what’s what whatever that may be
But if Gaitskill is also estranged
then which of us can tell
the difference?

Strike A Pose

Like Mark E. Smith
Who could shimmy
And shally with the
Best of The Village People
If and when he was
Ever put up to it
Thing was, most
Folk were afraid to even
Catch his wilful Situationist
Eye never mind ask him
To emulate a bunch of
Singing bux Queers
On the bloomin’ dancefloor

Moira

‘A hell of a woman’ – Jim Thompson

I
Let me tell that tragi-comic tale once more
the fast-talking shower of queers
no words just desires and drives.
Wasn’t Moira the queen of them gangsters?
Worser she was they said
especially in that King-sized bed of hers.
Through the long bleak Seventies
she kept a feral house of strays
had no qualm with seeing a few slip away
if necessary. Wasn’t she meant to have popped
old Grisly Irish Raymond with her very own hands?
They say she finished him with a claw hammer
bashed his ugly brains out all over the bar table
the commotion spilling the gang’s collection of beer
into the interstitial space of O’Hara’s exposed frontal lobes.
Looked like a Pollock, or worser a Freud, Francis Bacon laughed
in the Coach and Horses after in between gin Martini pints
this bunch of neo-Action Painters making startling order
out of supposed chaos in Soho even if to the untrained a mess.
Nothing boring anyhows, ain’t that right? Gangsters are sure vivid.
Moira loved it lapped it up the minutes and the bloody seconds
of evil excitement. Their trembling fear her power her pleasure
getting her sexy long stockinged legs over the prettier
Eton Harries. That chunky long leopard skin coat as a signature.
No years in domestic hell or the clink for her
myriad extortion or murder cases taken out well before
they got anywhere near somewhere
like court. Crooked cops. Death’s sister.

II
Suppose you could
file her under sociopath
going way beyond the individual
with her set of intersubjective cronies
a whole Middlesex mini universe of cut-throat
this and that hard against the loftier values
sown into the fabric of post-War life.
Iconoclast then though not sure
she or hers stand for anything
or if there was an underlying
project of any kind other than
greed and mayhem from the very
get-go probably kicked-off with
that Clacton-On-Sea heist which went
badly wrong and they had to finish
the bravely resistant postmistress who had
already seen too much.
Now we have all seen way too much
but these days there can be no going back.

III
Flashing her bristols was Moira. Do
you ever wonder, she asked, where
the bodies go? The liquid slap of the head
as they died. One last oh soundful
so sorrowful sigh. That incongruous stare
without any care not even looking over
her shoulder. I tryin’ hard shoot elsewhere
suggested the countryside. Anyhows I’d been
thinking more about the souls after death, like.
Out somewhere in the sticks?
Nah fool boy, she said, not there. Where
then? Her bristols all pricked up now like
she was gettin’ extra-excited. In her deep V
you were lost you could well see
she had plenty of what it took. Really don’t knows
where. Why does it matter? Nowhere
maybe. She laughs. Where’s that baby? That hot
red lipstick made her lips Satanic. Nowhere
did exist. I had been there. Years before
I remembered. Dark place more
sweaty than rock n’ roll fever. Music deeper and
scarier. She was biting the quiver on her
lower lip now. Wanna be lovers,
she asked? Moira, I said, yea sure.

IV
Worst decision ever. Woman means
you no harm her other boyos had said.
A soft spot there. Not to be believed.
Could show you the snuff video tapes if I
was allowed to keep ‘em. Lucky
to be still alive only cos I kept my
mouth shut. Pusface. Plus
eyes. Past is no window only
a painting you gotta interpret or last

night’s performance you gotta forget. I
was never very good at sleeping soundly or
at understanding pure malice. Weak me, eh?
So off you go East London mate out
towards Plaistow so as
to read the concrete prose. Biblical.
There, you can read the graffiti
smells like piss. At least it’s real.
At least it is real like evil. Carnal.
Learn your life lesson. Then move on.
If you possibly can.

V
Then again, maybe trouble never wants
to move on. Maybe you cannot.
Highlight the survivor bit.
Won’t let yourself. Remember Gisèle
that woman what happened her.
Hate has its reasons. Also Laima
from Lithuania not Vilnius
but Kaunas. The smaller second city.
Some faces you cannot ever forget.
Disappeared one night by Moira
and by her men. We all knew.
The worst kind of slowly delayed end.
That one gave me running nightmares.
Pregnant remains on a bonfire.
What could we do?
Didn’t find out until after
of course. ‘Wise intervened.

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