and not the doorways we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker than before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.
6
We still groped for each other on the back stairs or in parked cars
as the roads around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through a glass
already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
lullabies.
But damn if there isn’t anything sexier
than a slender boy with a handgun,
a fast car, a bottle of pills.
7
What would you like? I’d like my money’s worth.
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
(2000)
JENNIFER L. KNOX (BORN 1968)
Another Motive for Metaphor
I love to masturbate, especially
After a poem of mine’s accepted in
A literary magazine. Shit—
I open up that letter, smile awhile
And think, “This one goes out to Don, a total
Tool who I temped for in ’89:
Data-mother-fucking-entry this.”
Who’s got “inappropriate footwear” now?
“The inappropriate footwear’s on the other
Foot today, you hick,” I tell him, tell
Them all, as, lifting up my shirt, I notice
Nipples! Mine (O, gorgeous areolas!—
Pink as peonies)! And ass (my bouncy
Pony, prance in skintight smarty-pants!)!
(2005)
JANICE ERLBAUM (BORN 1969)
The Temp
He’s in love with you. But you’re only his
For the workweek. At night, you’re married.
On weekends, you lie with your husband
And tell him you’re thinking about work.
How his hands make things move across his desk.
How he signs his e-mails. He adores you.
Everyone knows about the two of you,
Though nothing’s happened, of course, you’re his
Colleague. So what if you stop by his desk
To say, I’m hungry. Are you absolutely married
To the idea of pizza? I propose let’s work
On it later. The phone rings. It’s your husband.
Like a man from TV, your husband
Doesn’t exist in your real life, you
Can’t seem to place him when you’re at work.
A staticky shape in the mist; his
Sheepish face, the reason you married
Him, a bent paper clip in your desk.
Chastely, your lover stops by your desk.
Stop calling him that. You have a husband.
And everyone knows you’re married
To the job. So concentrate. He tells you
He’s written the perfect agenda; this, his
Persistent attempt to woo you through work.
He has become your husband at work.
The dry marital bed of his desk
Where you reach for the comfort of his
Desire. You need another husband,
A partner, someone to bear fruit with you.
He pines for you. You crave it. Thus, you’re married.
You’ll never leave the man you married
For the man that you married at work.
You don’t have to. He belongs to you,
Like the menu you stow in your desk.
Like dessert. You don’t tell your husband.
It’s not cheating. Just, this business isn’t his.
His hand touches yours. Whose? Their faces, married
Into one face, one husband, one unending job to work.
The desk is your bed, the bed your desk. And the dutiful bride—that’s you.
(2004)
JENNY FACTOR (BORN 1969)
I don’t want you always to act your age:
Fall apart a little for me, please,
so when I kiss your mouth, your brow, your creamy
arms, your downy neck, eyelids, your strange
intense dark copper-lidded eyes that close
against me, when I hold you till your whole
strut-length of spine releases to my holding,
when I lay you, stroke your guiltless rose
open toward me, ages overturned…
I don’t want you to act your age, just yearn
toward what I offer; soften to my touch,
let me reach the place where you give milk,
suck and tongue you till my touch is much,
much more than youth or age or silk on silk.
(2000)
CATE MARVIN (BORN 1969)
Me and Men
The soiled fists of socks shucked before
they fell lumbersome to bed, the dirty pans,
the glasses their lips kissed fisted soapy
in my sink-worn hands. The flea-seeded sink,
basin of stubble shorn, their low snores
rumbling nights long as freight trains.
True, some nights their eyes pooled with light,
cleared to brown, unmuddied their river bottoms.
But more often, I liked best not being with them,
driving alone and thinking only of the fact of them.
Their flat bodies I held with grave disrespect;
perhaps this is why I sought them.
There were shadows beneath their eyes, and sweet
and slow moments unzipping their flies. I may
have gasped from time to time. But it is unfortunate,
for my men, that they knew me, and I knew them
as men. My blankness should have never
had anything to do with them. I tried
to forgive them for dropping their dirty clothes
by the bed, for playing deaf to my questions,
for ashing on my favorite rug, for slamming doors
on my hands, for being them. I can’t blame them
for owning what I wanted, back when
what I wanted was had only by men.
If I can’t wish a scar away, how can I wish them
obliviated from my touching? The fact is,
I am unable to remember their faces, any
of them, the smell of their collars, the fury I felt,
why I broke and broke things. It all seems quite bland,
and I would rather think of animals I have had.
(2001)
CATHERINE WAGNER (BORN 1969)
Lover
Prince Genji was in love with me in the eleventh century. Put his hand through my screens. Why Lady Murasaki you may go.
Sir Walter Scott courted me wi’ glove and ring, wi’ brotch and knife. I said you faker.
Sartre I fucked, it was bad.
Djuna Barnes was in love with me I told her I was scared she said Lie down!
Byron said he was we only flirted.
Will you said Lady Mary Wortley Montague stay after tea. Your ankle my dear as you rose from the clavichord.
Your hair being of the softest brightness and your bosom of the brightest softness I am loath to choose between and must address myself to both—so Philip Sidney
Once sat on Wystan Auden’s lap—kissed his jaw and rubbed his belly. I stuck my hand in his pants and found his old thing. We were both delighted. “Hag,” he said.
Job
I said God punish you for a righteous man I am raw.
Come in while I dress. I will not, said Charlotte Brontë and waited in the snow.
Virginia W and I bathing—neglected pond. A honeybee pricked my lower thigh. Quoth she, where the bee suck—
(1997)
C. DALE YOUNG (BORN 1969)
Maelstrom
Wind shook the trees and rain crackled
at the windows. Could it have been
any other way? Rain coming down,
clothes wet, water dripping from our hair?
At the window, could it have been
a ghost singing its final warning?
Clothes wet, water dripping from our hair,
he fell on me like rain. I could not speak.
A ghost sang its final warning
like a storm. He tore my shirt open
and fell on me like rain. I could not speak,
and I closed my eyes. It started like this.
Like a storm, he tore my shirt open,
the light in the stairwell flickering
as I closed my eyes. It started like this:
the steps pressing into my back,
the light in the stairwell flickering
sensing storm, our hands trembling.
The steps pressed into my back
under the sound of belts unbuckling.
Sensing storm, our hands trembled.
I could not watch, could not speak.
Under the sound of belts unbuckling,
a future unraveled like spun gold.
I could not watch, could not speak
then. And now, years later, the same
future unravels like spun gold:
the arguments, the body’s betrayals.
Then and now, years later, the same
quiet lying about the house.
The arguments, the body’s betrayals
resist closure or the quick dismissal.
This quiet lies about my house.
Again wind shakes the trees and rain crackles.
You resist closure or the quick dismissal.
Rain coming down. It started like this.
(2002)
BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY (BORN 1970)
Voluptuary
Normal love begs for kink. Loving wrong
is twisted and hair, the hair of blood-timed
mammals and damsels in paintings curls
subversively without effort.
And espionage of flesh roots in the dirt
of the heart. Vinegar love floods the tongue
with a uriny fire and who argues? Sour aunts.
In lovers’ mouths, only saccharine is unholy.
And if my sister married now then I will
wed wonder, I will seek blunder,
and wifely be naked for a throttled,
verging slumber slit with: love is losing.
If you haven’t known the true faulty
pleasure of half-beauty, the sublime uncomely,
dreamt without vision two hot marble arches
round your vague orca trumpet of a thigh,
then why would you love me? And how does
fever break without liquid, without spilling?
What woman cannot speak of strumpets? Who
has struck the head of lust without a strain?
Where is the mark, the dark, the brain?
I want terror only listening for the shallows
in the shame. Like dancers, elasticized time
for the sake of the body. And what body?
Blister, wizen. It’s worth it and it’s night.
Who wants pretty, when pretty is plain
and the heart is gnarled and the fullsaked
forest of being lost is home?
Forest where we love the beast surprising.
Anticipated fetish like missing toes. Or a thick,
dark, hairy heart, full to pluck or comb.
Or old. Where is the old, old lover;
finally ripe enough to fall without falling?
What is blossoming
when the darker sun inside feeds
the silence of starker stars?
(1999)
KEVIN YOUNG (BORN 1970)
Étude
I love making
love most just
after—adrift—
the cries & sometime
tears over, our strong
swimming done—
sheet wreck—
mattress a life
boat, listing—
(2003)
JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM (BORN 1971)
On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica
She stood before him wearing only pantries
and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze.
She had saved her public hair, and his cook
went hard as a fist. They fell to the bad.
He shoveled his duck into her posse
and all her worm juices spilled out.
Still, his enormous election raged on.
Her beasts heaved as he sacked them,
and his own nibbles went stuff as well.
She put her tong in his rear and talked ditty.
Oh, it was all that he could do not to comb.
(2004)
BETH ANN FENNELLY (BORN 1971)
Why We Shouldn’t Write Love Poems, or If We Must, Why We Shouldn’t Publish Them
How silly Robert Lowell seems in Norton’s,
all his love vows on facing pages: his second wife,
who simmered like a wasp, his third,
the dolphin who saved him, even “Skunk Hour”
for Miss Bishop (he proposed though she was gay),
and so on, a ten-page manic zoo of love,
he should have praised less and bought a dog.
We fall in love, we fumble for a pen,
we send our poems out like Jehovah’s Witnesses—
in time they return home, and when they do
they find the locks changed, FOR SALE stabbed in the yard.
Oh, aren’t the poems stupid and devout,
trying each key in their pockets in plain view
of the neighbors, some of whom openly gloat.
We should write about what we know
won’t change, volleyball, Styrofoam, or mildew.
If I want to write about our picnic in Alabama,
I should discuss the red-clay earth or fire ants,
not what happened while we sat cross-legged there
leaning over your surprise for me, crawfish you’d boiled with—
surprise again—three times too much crab boil—
Oh, how we thumbed apart the perforated joints
and scooped the white flesh from the red parings,
blowing on our wet hands between bites
because they burned like stars. Afterward,
in the public park, in hot sun, on red clay, inside my funnel
of thighs and skirt, your spicy, burning fingers shucked
the shell of my panties, then found my sweet meat
and strummed it, until it too was burning, burning, burning—
Ah, poem, I am weak from love, and you,
you are sneaky. Do not return home to shame me.
(2004)
TERRANCE HAYES (BORN 1971)
Preface
Well, ain’t your mouth a pretty little pacemaker.
And mmmm that tongue is a carp
I’d sure like to harpoon! We could eat crêpesuzettes
in the dim café
below your hypothalamus. I’d pull the last pear
from the pear tree. We could peer
over the ridge of your throat or creep
down the ladder until we reached the reef.
But before setting forth, you should accept whatever’s free
because, Baby, I’ve got at least an acre
of desires you can reap.
(2001)
CATHERINE WING (BORN 1972)
Eye-Fucked
for CW, the younger
You were just my candy, sweet-tart,
a skittle in the corner of the bar.
I caught you with a dance
and swung you on a star.
You were Mr. Good,
a hardheaded-honey that I bit
while on the beach under a wink
of moon. Soon even the waves
exchanged their tune—a snicker
for a swoon. Is the question:
did we swim or did we sink?
Were we suckerfish who struck out
on the sand? (Did we let things
get in and out of hand?)
Or was it just the glint of a passing
disco-eye-ball that cast its spark
and shadow before leading me
down your hall? Help me dove,
my dog-and-pony show’s
all laced up in a licorice whip.
Is the flicker of an eye all that love
is made of? A tickle blink of
sweet and spice, just a hint
of lark? Love, I made my eyes for you,
and you, love, you keep
this retina in the dark.
(2006)
ROSS MARTIN (BORN 1973)
Body Cavity
You have the right to remain silent.
A videotape recording of this procedure shall be made.