Grunge Gremlins, an E.P. Poem by Joe Costal
Track 1. I knew Kip Winger and Mötley Crüe were getting blow jobs even though I didn’t know what blow jobs were. When I first heard the phrase, I thought of hair dryers, the robot helmet-looking chairs inside my mom’s beauty parlor. Where the viejas called MTV “mierda,” but I couldn’t get enough. Heavy metal was my favorite, backstage footage in black and white, so it had to be real. Rockers who looked like girls surrounded by more girls. Indistinguishable. Make-up from the neck up. But the girl girls. Girls big-boobed and Aqua Netted blondes with toasted brown skin, lined up, hobbled like bruised peaches in halter tops, raising rail thin, downy haired arms in bangle bracelet unison. Yelling Woooooo at the camera, like it was all they knew how to say. Track 2. When Poison played live on Headbanger’s Ball, one of these girls lifted her “Open Up and Say Ahhh…” t-shirt, exposing white breasts. Bounced awake my insides. The camera caught it. Just a flash, but long enough. Long enough to hum electric in my mind’s eye buzzing red as the Coca-Cola light in our drug store’s window. Track 3. And I wanted to touch a boob. I decided one night, sweaty under Batman bedspread. I wanted to touch one so bad. Even though my Cuban grandfather called me a “fag” when I couldn’t catch a football while he was watching. I wanted to touch a boob. But I couldn’t play the recorder, let alone guitar. And I didn’t have money to buy a puffy ruffled pirate shirt or spandex. Nor the thigh width required for tight leather pants. No hair to style up and out. To tease. Mine was low and tight, combed over and back with Abuelo’s long black comb, licked fresh and unsheathed from his back pocket. When he was done my hair resembled Batista’s gelled helmet, not the curly chaos of Guevara’s guerrillas.
Joe Costal is a writer living at the Jersey Shore with his four children. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Challenges for the Delusional 2, an anthology by Diode Editions; The Maine Review, Pif Magazine & Ponder Review. He is an assistant editor at Barrelhouse.
22 PS_Winter_2018.indd 22
12/3/17 6:51 PM
