Love Letter to Pam Grier
BY MARCUS WICKER
Dearest Pam,
I still dream of you.
College. Our second date.
How the ceiling fan would not cure
my fever that day, the white walls
beaded in sweat. I could have killed
my white friend for walking in on us.
Or kissed him, right there in the dorms.
Damn the smoldering Newport cherry
that bathed my room in red. And you
cocking-back that cold, hard Glock
against Samuel L. Jackson’s dick.
My white friend and I, we could have
unzipped in front of the t.v. screen
and wrestled for the tube of Lubriderm.
I don’t know what scared me more:
my roommate’s wood or the camera,
out of breath, climbing mountains—
those muscled, brown thighs.
How were we supposed to compete
with Sam? Richard Pryor? Or Kareem?
With any man on your list of lays?
My mother’s answer: fuck foreplay—
the other Pam’s bed-tanned Baywatch
castmates, taped to her teen son’s wall.
For my thirteenth birthday, she framed you
garnishing a large bed in red lingerie.
I’m sorry. I never hung your poster.
Even now, I don’t know how
to love you right. But I suspect I was
onto something back in middle school,
unsticking the other Pam
to make room for my present—
four walls. So blank
and unassuming.
Dearest Pam,
I still dream of you.
College. Our second date.
How the ceiling fan would not cure
my fever that day, the white walls
beaded in sweat. I could have killed
my white friend for walking in on us.
Or kissed him, right there in the dorms.
Damn the smoldering Newport cherry
that bathed my room in red. And you
cocking-back that cold, hard Glock
against Samuel L. Jackson’s dick.
My white friend and I, we could have
unzipped in front of the t.v. screen
and wrestled for the tube of Lubriderm.
I don’t know what scared me more:
my roommate’s wood or the camera,
out of breath, climbing mountains—
those muscled, brown thighs.
How were we supposed to compete
with Sam? Richard Pryor? Or Kareem?
With any man on your list of lays?
My mother’s answer: fuck foreplay—
the other Pam’s bed-tanned Baywatch
castmates, taped to her teen son’s wall.
For my thirteenth birthday, she framed you
garnishing a large bed in red lingerie.
I’m sorry. I never hung your poster.
Even now, I don’t know how
to love you right. But I suspect I was
onto something back in middle school,
unsticking the other Pam
to make room for my present—
four walls. So blank
and unassuming.
MARCUS WICKER’S poems have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Harpur Palate, Rattle, Beloit, Sou’Wester, DIAGRAM, and cream city review, among other journals. He is an Ann Arbor, Michigan native who holds fellowships from Cave Canem and Indiana University, where he received his MFA. Marcus is also a 2010-2011 Fine Arts Work Center Fellow.