Joy Riot

Grimalkin takes off her clothes on the hot second story. More fires burn. Old fires burn still. Shui Lightening complex, 5005 acres. June ABCD misc complex, 4080 acres. Gallery Basin with Indian, nobody knows. Iron, Capps, Mariposa complex 26000 acres, seven percent contained.
Listens to John Fahey play so sad and slow, dead from drinking long ago, outside of Cambridge, Tacoma, Jersey City abandoned railway tunnels hiked in bare feet.
She loves him more than thirty years worth. The blossoms have faded, the sun is setting. She places her hot hands on his thighs; knows he’s the best hung in Monterey County. She’ll take it, all of it, again. No money, dirt floors, she doesn’t care. What’s to keep her here, smoke and salty sand?
Black thatch. Some gray. She thinks what a wonderful package it is. She will do him, right. Lightly brushes the sinew seared old arms. Always black on brown deep, deep eyes. Remembers the first time and the times in between.
Some years it burns more. No brush cleared. Bushes ignite even as coyotes whelp, prickly pears pop, singes cherry, apricot, walnut orchard. Ranchers cuss, piss on their barns. “It’s no good!” “How do you like them apples, Ma, pussy whipped again!” Yuppified fucker with a gas powered mower hit a rock that sparked the blaze that burnt the house to the ground in four minutes flat. One dog trapped, two cats missing.
Grimalkin calls the fire dept the testosterone squad. Mayhem and tragedy, that’s how they like it. She just wants to fuck this man, hush, just him now. The years that she’s gone cock crazy she can count. Went as long as five years in between once.
Apologizes only to the one daughter that doesn’t approve. Wants Ma to stay in the kitchen, behind a desk, in the drivers’ seat. Not in the backseat blowing some golden surfer.
Legacy is now platinum. Sirens. He sleeps still, fleshy lips parted. Touches the lips with the tip of her tongue. Straddles him. Strong hands grip her shoulders, push her down, slipping into the same old madness, danger, ardor, secrets, velvet, chocolate, silver. Piquant, but not too.
She thinks, “ Nobody can hold this man. No woman; certainly no child.” Wildfire. Pulls her in close with those remarkable hands just to push her away again. Tries not to spook him, a stag in some forlorn canyon where it’s always twilight. Never slacks his thirst because he thinks she’s poisoned the well. Wiley. Twice he slapped her with an open hand to the face; cold cocked her one Christmas Eve. Another because she was cock teasing a redhead. She never could resist gingery terminal hair.
Remembers the boys that turned to men if and when she fucked them. Remembers the men not afraid in their own passionate lives, few as they were. Always admired someone living their life, taking the consequences, joy, sorrow. Cinnamon or gunpowder? No cowards, no feeble spectators!
She always forgives legacy man. He’s deep inside, touching her brainstem. Air in the room lights on their skin like it wants to leave the neighborhood. Copper blood smell of a house on fire. Reflection of flames in the mirror, under the bed, across the street. The astonishment as tracts ignite, floor plan by floor plan. Ten all the same little boxes, tacky on a hillside inferno.
Grimalkin and her man are silhouetted. The strings on the guitar sizzle and snap. It’s snowing now, blanketing their subterranean lair. Their hands stained with sooty soil, they laugh and laugh, lick and lick. She whispers with all the air left in her lungs, “A dirt floor can save your life.”