Adam Fieled (Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): Something Solid: Aughts Philly: "Flaming Red Hair"
The Last Drop lost its joie de vivre in 2009—
Dani enforced this, acting out a script
(tease, taunt, topple) written for her by
South Philly goons. Why I’m now bemused
by the gaucherie of Dani’s gestures— cheap,
black, low-cut dresses worn to reveal ample cleavage,
flaming red hair styled always in plummeting
cascades— is that in ’18, no one’s titillated
by anything, let alone Dani— negligee stores derelict.
The truth of the imbroglio is an embarrassed
grin, about a grueling summer day encumbered
by our teased out, taunted out encounter. I
must say I am tempted to lie. The bathroom
door shut on us. The Drop was hollowed out.
In the end, I pined for Dani on those nights
the grim reality of the recession still hadn’t sunk in—
as though the revelation, again, of her breasts could
deliver me from shadows which impinged, but (it
seemed) possibly only temporarily. Once, in her
Pine Street apartment, she bothered to walk around
before me in a bath towel— the teasing, taunting then
brought, it would seem, to apotheosis. Permission
granted, then denied, pushed past, joie de vivre visited
upon the bloody-minded redhead, forever. Dani
knowingly inverted Mary and Abby— lineaments
of gratified desire replaced by sharpened knives.
In the ascendency (the Philly party being over), Dani
turned graciousness disgusting— symbolic leg extended, foot resting on sink.
© Adam Fieled 2018-2026
Dani enforced this, acting out a script
(tease, taunt, topple) written for her by
South Philly goons. Why I’m now bemused
by the gaucherie of Dani’s gestures— cheap,
black, low-cut dresses worn to reveal ample cleavage,
flaming red hair styled always in plummeting
cascades— is that in ’18, no one’s titillated
by anything, let alone Dani— negligee stores derelict.
The truth of the imbroglio is an embarrassed
grin, about a grueling summer day encumbered
by our teased out, taunted out encounter. I
must say I am tempted to lie. The bathroom
door shut on us. The Drop was hollowed out.
In the end, I pined for Dani on those nights
the grim reality of the recession still hadn’t sunk in—
as though the revelation, again, of her breasts could
deliver me from shadows which impinged, but (it
seemed) possibly only temporarily. Once, in her
Pine Street apartment, she bothered to walk around
before me in a bath towel— the teasing, taunting then
brought, it would seem, to apotheosis. Permission
granted, then denied, pushed past, joie de vivre visited
upon the bloody-minded redhead, forever. Dani
knowingly inverted Mary and Abby— lineaments
of gratified desire replaced by sharpened knives.
In the ascendency (the Philly party being over), Dani
turned graciousness disgusting— symbolic leg extended, foot resting on sink.
© Adam Fieled 2018-2026
<< Home