Song of the Melancholy Slut by Alina Pleskova | LitStyle Day 3 | Poetry

When the universe winks,
I wink back reflexively

As now, “Part-Time Lover”
on the taxi radio & my head

half out the window
grinning at bleached sky

on waterway, this life caught
in a protracted moment of buffering

Stevie’s talk of illicitness
& discretion rings quaint:

an affair, in its exactitude, marks
the lover as wrong, full stop

A useless gauge if the stakes
aren’t so linear, as here

In Durak, the player left holding
cards is deemed the fool

There’s no option to fold
if you foresee it–

wait for defeat or play like
you don’t know it’s coming

I haven’t decided to leave you
yet, but I can envision it today

in this pocket of bliss, my body
hazed with yr brackish stink

Last week, I tried to lose a man
at the art museum, but he kept

appearing, palm on my back,
to ask what I thought. I thought

only of a lost capacity to ignore
discord for carnality’s sake

Dura, dura sang Vadim
when I lost. The table laughed

& so did I. That’s how it goes:
I don’t know I’m a dura until

the universe winks & I squint
to determine whether

it’s an illusion. As if knowing
alters  the outcome