Creative Writing Contest Winner: Kyle Eveleth

Kyle Eveleth is a connoisseur of coffee, cheese, and sleep; a proud member of the Scottish diaspora; and a graduate student in English at CMU. He has published two collections of poetry, The Division (2007) and The Cruelest Month (2008). In addition to poetry and research, he writes sporadic, highly-detailed adventures for groups of like-minded geeks who also roll 20s.

Mme. Le Sabre (la voiture belle)

Shoes stained slick by that ick,
the machine-god ichor in the lane,
dropped from the beast that made the impression
of my wallet on my ass that much smaller.

It’s $3.99/qt for the lifeblood that lubes
magically, like KY Yours and Mine,
makes things slide when they might grind
because today, tonight, I don’t have the time

to usher you in. I can’t drop everything
just to shower you with attention,
getting my fingers dirty in those slick crevices
only trained professionals should be probing.

You whine when I leave it be, sweetie,
but you whine more when I’m inside.
It isn’t until I pull off your belt that I
silence your cries and hear that low, throaty purr.

That’s when I get to work and roll up my sleeves,
dive in to the elbows, then get down on my knees,
work from the top-down and get underneath.
pull out the dipstick and cram it in your sheath.

She drips when we’re done for maybe an hour
before her moving parts settle and cool
for a nap; I sit grinning, chewing a toothpick
and my shoes are stained slick by her ick.
Beacon Street

I was ribcage-deep in the mechanical icebox,
digging for 3/4 pint of Natty Light for him,
Corona for me mum, and ripe Killian’s
for m’self when he muttered something dirty
about them jungle girls in the cheer squad
for the Saints. I drew disgust like a scalpel
across my face and split open a sour wound,
gaping in disappointment at that man;

said I to him, ‘what if I loved a girl
whose skin was lovely dark and deep and
whose hair curled round my fingers in the night
when I slept close to her, feeling heat
from her wide, sexy hips radiating
into my cold white hand’ and said he
‘boy, stay away from them jungle girls
they don’t know what love is’

All I thought in bed that night was
sweet sweltering ‘jungle dreams’ where colors
bled into a fine tanned cafe au lait and
blue eyes browned to hazel and green and
my red hair burned out to a deeper auburn
in a face made magnificent mulatto from my
rather russet, unbecoming Scot and her
high-cheeked Nile blood;

He could not recall those blurry bygone days
in the 70s when a man could not walk into
Townside or down Brookline street without hearing
blasphemy split the city silence, saying ‘sonny
you in da wrong parta town wit da wrong kinda crowd,’
where he and Bird would ball up hard knuckles
capped with scars and brawl the beer off.

I dreamt of races more distinct than palette swaps
I dreamt of blood thicker than veils of false acceptance
I dreamt of love more pervasive than hatred and disgust
I dreamt of riots and fevers, jungles and wine bottles
I dreamt and thought of what precisely love is