If You Asked About The Girl I’m Sleeping With:

She tastes like whiskey, which reminds me of you
and when she comes, her head thrown back like
it’s on a broken hinge, I grip the doorknobs of her
shoulders and don’t think about how your hips
offered perfect handles for my palms. Later, she wants
a shirt, and it’s yours I grab from the top of the drawer,
folded in with all my other secrets. Her calves say
mid and west, which is where we are, her body
as smooth and forgiving as the land outside.
Shadows camouflage her back, slats of shutter
waving down it like an undecipherable data code. She
shows me her pinwheels, body slides, and the look
she gives her favorite customers, the ones she would
go home with if she hadn’t met them when they
were watching her dance. The look asks, could you
know me better? When we switch the lights off, I keep
my eyes open. I’m looking back, and trying to answer.

BY HANNAH OBERMAN-BREINDEL

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Hannah Oberman-Breindel’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Best of the Net 2012, BOXCAR, Stirring, Thrush, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She is completing her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she also teaches writing at the university and at a local men’s prison.