I Went to the Movies Hoping Just Once The Monster Got the Girl

He was as hungry for love as I. He lay in his cave
or castle longing for the doctor’s lovely nurse,
the archeologist’s terrific assistant while I hid
in my bedroom, acne lighting up the gloom like
a stoplight, wondering if anybody anywhere would
ever marry me.

I was hardly able to stay in my seat as the possibilities
were whittled away; her laughter at his clumsy gifts,
her terror at his dumbness and rage, his final realization
synapses lazy as fly balls connecting at last as he
stands in the rain peering through her bedroom window
she in chiffon and dainty slingbacks he looking at
his butcher shop hands knowing he could never unsnap
a bra

and in comes Jock Mahoney or Steve Cochran and takes
everything off in a wink and she kisses him over
and over, wants to kiss him has been waiting to kiss
him while the monster feels his own lips big as eels
or can’t find them at all or finds four.

I almost shouted into the dark that life with Jock
or Steve was almost something to be feared. Couldn’t
she see herself in a year or two dying at a barbecue,
another profile nobody with his tongue in her ear?
Wouldn’t she regret that she had not chosen to stay
with someone whose adoration was as gigantic as
his feet?

I went to the movies hoping that just once somebody
would see beneath the scales and stitches to the huge
borrowed heart and choose it, but each time Blob
was dissolved, Ogre subdued, Ratman trapped, Giant
Leech dislodged forever and each time Sweater Girl
ran sobbing into those predictable rolled up sleeves
I started to cry too, afraid for myself, lonely as
a leftover thumb.

“What’s the matter with him?” the cheerleaders asked
the high scorers as they filed out.

“Nothing. He’s weird, that’s all.”
—Ronald Koertge