Some Girl’s Panties by Tom Montag

Some girl’s panties still
under a chair in the room
they rented me. She doesn’t

need them, you assume,
if they’re still here.
And they are. She’s not

a big girl, and likely
not a virgin either,
flung off as they were

and forgotten. I think
of her, commando now
in this small town

hours from the nearest
paved road, summertime,
but cool in the way

of far north Canada.
She won’t be chafing down
there as she walks and

fights mosquitoes, which
are everywhere. And
the flies, desperate

and vicious, after
every speck of moisture.
I think of her delight

last night, the small noise
she made in the final
shuddering of their

moment. Someone must
have knocked on the door,
to make her forget them.

Someone must have rushed
her into her clothes.
I don’t know. I have

so little to go on,
only this, her panties
left under that chair.

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing editor at Verse-Virtual. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August) and at year’s end received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review and Blue Heron Review. Other poems will be found at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.