LINDA BLAIR

When I close my eyes, Linda Blair is nude but wrapped in an American flag, her pre-fab/post-flab arm’n’elbow raised out in stark salute, she used to hang down near the ShopRite just jiving only asking for a buck, you couldn’t believe the tricks this little lady could pull and would do for a quick dollar. She stuck her right leg behind her head like it was America’s Funniest Home Videos. She’d buy dogs, real frankenweiners, with the killing that she made, and she’d eat them in three bites, holding the sogging bun between her thumb and middle finger, but always cradled in her palm, but always always with the mustard swig down the dog. If I’m a misrepresentation, Linda Blair has always been a purist when it came to both her Dog and her Country. She trained horses in the summer of fear and she spoke for abused animals in the Summer of the Macarena when it was close to 100 degrees for all of July, and we all had to cradle around the pool with the Space Jam soundtrack on tape, nothing to stare at but the wooden barrier nailed to our new, bi-leveled wooden deck built with the hands piled up in the back of a new Oldsmobile Coach. I know you remember this. We went to the MegaSpectrum to see 98 Degrees, just dripping in leche, just sodding and sobbing, in puddles spread between and beneath the seats of actual jeans. I know you remember the post-Mom pouch prostate at the fly, the rolled crotch that begged to stretch and force its fingers against a watermelon-flavored Fruit by the Foot safely cooled and velcroed tight into a blue Artic Chill lunchbox, my proud and loyal lunchbox, you stand by me now and hold my should in paw. You: tell me calm and say that it is lunch, that this is wholesome and dripping in Linda, dripping in leche, sodden with milk.