Her lips are a very dark pink.
The homeless are especially nice to my wife.
She gives money to every beggar she sees, smiles at each God
bless you, child. She doesn’t have to be naked
to get a man’s attention. All of Brooklyn
loves her. I read
the funny pages to her every morning, then read
the rest of the paper myself. We hold our mugs with outstretched pinkies.
I saw an ad for the Miss Brooklyn
beauty pageant last week and thought, My wife
would be perfect for that! Still half-naked,
I ran to the phone and registered her. For God’s
sake, she said, blushing like a winsome goddess.
Her cheeks were as red
as her naked
pink
ass after her “Bad Wife”
spankings. (Sometimes nightlife is scarce in Brooklyn.)
I would never win Miss Brooklynite,
she said. Miss Brooklyn, I corrected her. Thank God
for her low self-esteem; with minor cajoling, my wife
agreed. After I read
the sports section, we bought a pink
dress. The fabric was flimsy; it made her look naked.
One contestant arrived naked
from the waist up. Not unusual for Brooklyn,
though the pageant was held in Manhattan. My spouse pinked
me in the arm with a fingernail, anxious. God
forbid we do something I wanted to do. Read
my lips, said my wife.
I want to leave, said my wife.
Please—we’ll go home, you’ll read
and I’ll lie naked
on the couch. She cried as we crossed the Brooklyn
Bridge, bawling ungodly
noises. Her tears stained her dress a pretty dark pink.
Have I told you how I met my wife? Two years before Brooklyn;
I was halfway through Naked Lunch. She’d never heard of it. God,
I said, don’t you read? No, she said. Her cheeks went pink.