Annie

By Wayne Paul Mattingly

ANNIE, Sitting Up In Bed At 2 a.m., In Goteborg, Talking To A Photograph

You know who you want.

It’s me you’re afraid of.

Me.

With my ice blues blazing, searing

the hollow brilliance

of your ‘cool’,

finding the fire and fire

and fire

of all you burn for.

***

Me, my god, me!

My hair is so blonde—so blonde.

I laugh in foreign tongue.

Every move seduces:

I glide through crowds to you~

the most desirable breasts

you’ve ever seen, held.

Home, here

I’m just another girl with lumpy thighs

sometimes the apple

of my father’s eye,

of you, there, in Hollywood, with your surviving cocksure.

***

All you want, you ask for,

comes back to me.

More than “Leda”, even,

and we met on earth.

***

What besides plane fare

could be keeping you?

***

You break, hone, scat and rattle

the walls of your proscenium held world,

shake demons and sex

from others’ nightmares--

you tease you tease you tease

the best—O,

***

my—I

bled every day for five weeks

when I came

home--for no good

reason--all over my father’s house--

for you-- rivers for you!

Blood red rivers pouring

into stiff white sheets--

***

The metaphors won’t shift.

I should be dead

without you.

But that’s fairytale stuff.

At least send me a lover’s lie,

you bastard,

until the plane fare

is coming.

***

It’s me you want, you’re afraid of,

keep coming back to,

ME you love

in fiction, in memory’s bed,

in every other woman’s body

you grapple with, struggle

to shape, like clay, that body

into me--

from the instant

we blew right through each other

clinging to shower rods and clamoring naked

down staircases unable to stop—

Heat, heart, soulstuff—

Fuck me fuck me fuck me.

***

You sizzle, whisper:

marry me, marry me, marry me

***

rehearsing

like you do

for opening nights

on stage.

***

And

only plane fare?

keeping you, now

that you know,

you bastard:

***

I do I do I do.

🩷🩷🩷

Wayne Paul Mattingly is a multi-award-winning playwright staged nationally/internationally. Proud recipient of the 2020 BRIO Award, Bronx, NY; Winner--The Tennessee Chapbook Prize; two-time recipient Can Serrat residencies/Barcelona; Disquiet Literary residency/Lisbon; Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship/Taos, NM; & others.

Selected Published work: 30 Scenes for Young Women 15-30, 2024: 2024Mini Plays 2023; Best Men’s Monologues 2021; Best 10-Minute Plays 2020, 17; Best Women's Monologues 2022, 1919, 2014; Best Stage Scenes 1999, Smith & Kraus; More 10-Minute Plays for Teens 2015, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books; Poetry & Plays 14 2007; Mingled Voices 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (poetry), & more