Blue-Eyed Boyfriends

lining up to look at me all at once:
a firing squad of looking, my head
in one of those big paper cones
to keep a bitch from biting her wounds,
back up against those gray brick apartments,
hemmed by the bayou. All my blue-eyed
boyfriends swaying like spikerush,
staring me down. Some without socks,
grown stockier, self-effacing, shit-faced.
Doesn’t matter. They just want to see me
see them. Their eyes—some wet, shallow,
open as pie pans left in the rain, some all
pupil, so bottomless-inkwell you cant see
the blue until it smudges your thumb.
Some for a second, like looking through
the sunroof between buildings. Others
so light they look blighted by lime,
bleached of gravity. What to do now.
I throw nickels at them in remuneration.
They ping off the pylons or platt
tail-up onto the sludge of the bayou.
All my ammunition gone, I get it.
A storm funneling up in the Gulf,
joining forces to fix me in its forecast.