Manjula Martin
The Android's Wife
T
he first night on New Year's at the party I pop a grape into your mouth and it bounces right back out, but your kiss smacks of carbon. Could be sharper, actually.
Later in bed you bite my lip like any man would and we, like everyone is and becomes, are two mechanical animals, one with an ass of honey and steel. In the morning I wonder about leaving you in the apartment but you look so-sleeping-there in my bed where the hot water bottle usually goes. Plus I didn't think I could lift you, so I left you. Later I dreamt I'd ordered you to stay. Outside on the dirty streets of my neighborhood there are always partsjoints and limbs, crumbling rejects, or new for sale, cheap no tax. When I stop by the corner store to pick up more wine 1 watch the cleaner-trucks trundle past and 1 blush, thinking, maybe you know them. You all do look alike. I come home from work and you've shined the steel of the stove, fixed the wire TV antennae, backed up my hard drive, changed my guitar strings (also steel), unscrewed the landlord's tinny blinds, and are almost done installing brass rods for the fresh green curtains I bought three springs ago but never hung. . You stay more nights. You singe my sheets. I grease your collar with my hair. You blink and it's a call ahead for reservations, traffic info, movie tickets- 1 think it's so much fun. My phone doesn't ring but when I check it 1 have "one- hundred- new- messages," each one reciting a love sonnet by Pablo Neruda. You let me lie on top of you while we sleep and I dream-I'm a cowgirl, a fleshy future herder of bucking metal and brawn. 1t doesn't usually last long I get too scared I'll rust you, break you. For lunar new year you give me a matchbox sculpted from neurons and I give you a pronoun. My friends don't get us anything, they still think deep down I'm just your job.
Winter路 Spring 2008
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