Kory M. Shrum

Feminism


I never knew my father until I ordered a prostitute.
Even those last preceding moments

gave themselves easily to surrealism and obscurity.
The concierge’s face

intersecting with my subtlety. Agency. Catering. Women
Interested in Women. Myself accepting

the number. Punching square plastic numbers.
Yes. Two. Absolutely.

I set the stage. Bed center. Chair beside the table. Table
holding tequila. Tequila holding

the full spectrum of Technicolor spasms beyond the window.
Nothing distracts me from the immediacy of this room. Of

two women, both taller than myself, entering.
Both surprised. Both trained

to hide it and failing. Already I want my money back.
I refrain from saying “On the bed.”

Limitation doesn’t suit such a situation. Instead I say,
I’ll be here. I take a seat. I take a shot of tequila,

my father’s last imported vintage. I’ll be watching you.
They both come. They both look surprised.

I am also surprised. Not by the product of excessive gyration.
I’m surprised

to find that I am not thinking of the women, of $250 an hour
or the tangle of slick limbs, moisture

the color of coffee creamer—none of it distracts me
from my own inherited design,
or my blind determination to try on the skin of another.
Years later I ask myself, I pull him on because—

I try to hold my own attention. Fuck her with this.
Parlor tricks can’t dim the weight of

my father.
He takes a drink, offers the bottle to the girl—

as he would have only one. He kisses her. Moves her
to the side of the bed so he may remain standing.

He never relinquishes power, this man, my father.
He closes his fingers around her neck.

His thumb rests threateningly at the base of her throat.
Here, at this point, I realize my mistake.

Too many women and not enough participants.
My father, never the observer, could not

simply become one because I stretched on his skin.
I pick a girl, by shirt color. I offer her a drink.

We toast my father. I remark, should he be dead,
I’d put him, in his urn, by the window,

beside the empty bottle still wet as our lips,
and force him to watch.