I Had A Tapeworm

I had a tapeworm, and imagined it
flat—paper-flat—like a strip of caps,
pallid red, a quarter-inch wide
with bulbous BB bullfrog eyes
peeking out of my asshole as I lolled
in a crowded fetid basement swimming pool
(the kind that used to be in inner-city Ys:
windowless; steamy; concrete-block moldings
chalky-cracked), and you whom I’ve neither
seen nor heard of for thirty years
were saying I’d give everyone in the pool
my tapeworm, which you knew had eaten
my insides and now had threaded through
both my intestines and was trying to get out.
Where were we? Everyone was old, old—
gray, infirm; flaccid and thin
or fat and bald, all ill flesh drooping—
the women in rubber-flowered bathing caps
and black one-piece suits as if we were all
on an outing from a nursing home.
I couldn’t see myself to see how old I was,
but you were thirty, at the peak of your beauty,
as when you knelt naked on the motel room bed
brushing out your thick dark waist-length hair
after cheating on the lover you were cheating
on your husband with, who was at that moment
waiting for you in another motel room
from which you had slipped to meet me secretly:
a secret inside a secret, buried, encased,
as if if we dug deep enough into it
we’d find what we were trying
to get or stop.

Source: Poetry (February 2009)