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.