This is a lesbian poem. For the optimum experience, read it aloud with a healthy amount of swagger. Published in My Lover Is a Woman (Ed. Leslea Newman)
SAILOR
The girls go by in their sailor suits
They catch my eye in their sailor suits
Big or slight they all grin like brutes
In steam-ironed pants and buffed jet boots
They saunter right up my alley.
I study their easy confident strides
Crew cuts and white hats capping decadent eyes
They shiver the pearl on night’s oysters prize
They shiver me timbers, unbuckle me thighs
This alley was made for seething.
From the sweat of the street lamp or lap of the sea
A smooth sailor girl comes swimming to me
Says she wants it right now and she wants it for free
Clamps her palms to my shoulders, her knees to my knees
This alley was made for cruising.
Her face is dark coffee, her head has no hair
Her cap shines like neon in the bristling night air
She pins her brass metals to my black brassiere
Tucks her teeth like bright trophies behind my left ear
This alley is very rewarding.
She tosses her jacket and rolls up her sleeves
On her arm’s a tattoo of an anchor at sea
She points to the anchor and whispers “that’s me”
And the wetter I get the more clearly I see
This alley was made for submersion.
Her fingers unbutton my 501’s
This girl’s fishing for trouble and for troubling fun
She slides of her gold rings and they glint like the sun
Then she smirks, rubs her knuckles, and spits out her gum
This alley was made for swooning.
Now she’s pushing her prow to my ocean’s sponge wall
Uncorking my barnacle, breaking my fall
And there’s pink champagne fizzling down my decks and my hall
As she wrecks her great ship on my bright port-of-call
This alley was made for drowning.