Brothel rooms and butcher shops

picking at the bones
of whatever little
love I was given
in my childhood-
now I’m in my thirties
heaping spoonfuls
of imitation love
served in cheap 
Birmingham hotels
and smoke-filled bars
where old women,
weathered and indifferent,
await me; I’ll
give her my number 
and forty minutes
of my time
to make up
for time served in
abusive and emotionally
vacant marriages.
maybe I’ll leave her
with obscenities
that would better
suit her mind
than the brothel rooms
and butcher shops
she’s leased to ex-lovers –
this is ours,
our vulture’s romance.