‘Three Women Blues/Lay Lady Lay’ by Parrish

hey, 

it was a crazy long drive to that endless night in seattle, from redding to eugene you were sleeping in my lap, dreaming of jack that night at wamu, me stroking your hair and playing these dreams of you, somehow we made neptune before the show, i found blind willie mctell on brooklyn avenue, he’s playing now where i lie alone but for rose thorns cutting my lips, you said you knew him and mentioned white jack’s tribute called three women blues, smiling at me like creation was a game show and you were its host, you touched the jacket and the music started like your finger was a stylus, i’m overcome by that deathless georgia voice humming words i’ll never understand, slaves in chains revolting against their masters rose up before me, i was seeing myself in your eyes, baby, they were putting heads on pikes like it never happened in this country of george floyd choking under some dumb cop’s knee but happened every time you came to me on your knees wherever we happened to be, you were so wild and fun and full of bile that when i bit into you i had to swallow the throw-up in my mouth just to kiss you again, sometimes i didn’t since you told me you liked your taste on your tongue, i was the one crawling in that seattle record store, your head nowhere near my pike since you had swallowed it on the road, i’m dying for lack of your breath, waiting for you to return it to me, this coveted record in my hands as you coo, that’s me, babe, i’m all three women doncha know, moving your two hands’ three fingers from your cheek to your thrapple, as if you were finger painting yourself, tracing now the flawless curves of your breasts where my head almost never rested, your fingers coming together at your tits’ points, a quick violent twist sketched in your nipples like they had they just suddenly bloomed, and then your magic fingers pushed outward as if you had just plucked them for me, rose petals you carelessly tossed at my eyes, they found my mouth instead, i craved your flowers’ taste, there’s no word in this language for the shade of your skin, it’s more of a sound, a gurgling throat drowning when it’s thirsty, you make it on me wherever you capture me at my desk, on park benches, in the driver’s seat helpless in the slow moving portland traffic and i’m stroking your neck like its beautiful color will permeate my hands and make every object i touch a marvel of the universe, next to us i hear a truck’s lonesome whistle blow, its driver had timed his long air-horn squeal with the sound of my release, you said you were three women always looking for a pair, like you’re the holy trinity in a single mouth i enter three times a day to receive g-d’s blessing, i’m the yellow, you sang, and i’m the brown too, as for the third color, you said it was the black of your neil young shirt, you’d wear it after the show, in our lay lady lay bed, showing me again the colors of your mind that was just my desire unhinged, only i was the lady you were laying, my pike was forever yours, i couldn’t take it back if i wanted to, i didn’t even try that afternoon on brooklyn avenue where neptune still stands despite the plague reaching out to touch what you had drawn on the canvas of skin, your petals grinding my teeth, forget these boring record stores, you said, let’s follow jack, he’s in portland tomorrow, that’s when I noticed him on the wall, supervising the store from that slightly ripped poster and singing about the colors your hair happened to wear that week, red-blonde-brunette, a different one each day, i preferred your natural black but i didn’t care as long as it was mine to chew and i was chewing then, on my knees feeding on you feeding on me, your head again lending me my pike, i wasn’t revolting in this place more public than keller fountain park had been, your fresh nipples keeping my hands steady, the taste of flowers famishes me, the clerk started to holler for the cops through the window, somehow they were never far when you were near, but jack’s voice stifled his scream, not mine, from the wall he put your pink phone in the clerk’s hand, it’s camera eye had been activated by your rectum always winking in the open air, your panties your knee pads, you sure know how to pack for a trip, and it’s jack’s three women coming through the store’s exceptional speakers, you had it put it on when you touched blind willie, the soundtrack for the movie the clerk was filming with your phone, he looks like jack too, sitting on the counter so calm above his california gal going down on me slow, taking us in through your nether eye, and you’re talking out of the side of her mouth, saying we’ll do this again in portland, babe, then reno, all the way to nashville, let’s make ernest tubb’s record store, it’s the best, jack says, you’re coming baby, like it or not, jack screams from the wall, and you pant the same words in my ears, jack and you in stereo, i’m always coming between you two, it’s ok, you’re voice never sounded sweeter singing i’m like three women in one, ask jack, i don’t have to, i’m watching you now, you put your movie on my phone, it’s like you have three mouths, how come jack always gets two for my one, there’s no off switch for these dreams of you, variegated colors of your lay, lady, lay mind in our lay, lady, bed, blues like chains wrapped around my head.  

About the Author:

Parrish is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer and critic living somewhere in California and teaching most usually at UC Davis. Parrish’s recent short fiction has appeared in Raritan, Ploughshares, Equinox, Vestal Review, Sonic Boom, and Blood and Bourbon.