by David Lehman
swore that his desire had never diminished.
Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
and the world flares up in an explosion of light?
Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
of their desire, as if each were a criminal
out on parole, a desperado with a long record
of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes
each one from all but the worst company,
and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?
But it’s the glances that I like, the quick ones,
the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve
of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
and fat possibility swaggers into the world
like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes
the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
for closure, for the completion of the circle,
as if each of us were born only half a body
and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X
across its bald head, to hold out a hand
for each passing woman to slap? Better
to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous
or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination
and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
relief from the self, the prisoner let out
into a small square of sunlight with a single
red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back
against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
to one’s mortal cage, steel doors slamming
in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?
(1991)
ROBERT HASS (BORN 1941)
Against Botticelli
1
In the life we lead together every paradise is lost.
Nothing could be easier: summer gathers new leaves
to casual darkness. So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance.
Mad seed. Death waits it out. It waits us out,
the sleek incandescent saints, earthly and prayerful.
In our modesty. In our shamefast and steady attention
to the ceremony, its preparation, the formal hovering
of pleasure which falls like the rain we pray not to get
and are glad for and drown in. Or spray of that sea,
irised: otters in the tide lash, in the kelp-drench,
mammal warmth and the inhuman element. Ah, that is the secret.
That she is an otter, that Botticelli saw her so.
That we are not otters and are not in the painting
by Botticelli. We are not even in the painting by Bosch
where the people are standing around looking at the frame
of the Botticelli painting and when Love arrives, they throw up.
Or the Goya painting of the sad ones, angular and shriven,
who watch the Bosch and feel very compassionate
but hurt each other often and inefficiently. We are not in any painting.
If we do it at all, we will be like the old Russians.
We’ll walk down through scrub oak to the sea
and where the seals lie preening on the beach
we will look at each other steadily
and butcher them and skin them.
2
The myth they chose was the constant lovers.
The theme was richness over time.
It is a difficult story and the wise never choose it
because it requires a long performance
and because there is nothing, by definition, between the acts.
It is different in kind from a man and the pale woman
he fucks in the ass underneath the stars
because it is summer and they are full of longing
and sick of birth. They burn coolly
like phosphorus, and the thing need be done
only once. Like the sacking of Troy
it survives in imagination,
in the longing brought perfectly to closing,
the woman’s white hands opening, opening,
and the man churning inside her, thrashing there.
And light travels as if all the stars they were under
exploded centuries ago and they are resting now, glowing.
The woman thinks what she is feeling is like the dark
and utterly complete. The man is past sadness,
though his eyes are wet. He is learning about gratitude,
how final it is, as if the grace in Botticelli’s Primavera,
the one with sad eyes who represents pleasure,
had a canvas to herself, entirely to herself.
(1979)
LINDA GREGG (BORN 1942)
Kept Burning and Distant
You return when you feel like it,
like rain. And like rain you are tender,
with the rain’s inept tenderness.
A passion so general I could be anywhere.
You carry me out into the wet air.
You lay me down on the leaves
and the strong thing is not the sex
but waking up alone under trees after.
(1991)
SHARON OLDS (BORN 1942)
The Sisters of Sexual Treasure
As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother’s house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men’s bodies
were like our father’s body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, elegant
knees, long tapered calves—
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
Like explorers who
discover a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts that
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn’t there,
it was there.
(1978)
LOUISE GLÜCK (BORN 1943)
The Encounter
You came to the side of the bed
and sat staring at me.
Then you kissed me—I felt
hot wax on my forehead.
I wanted it to leave a mark:
that’s how I knew I loved you.
Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,
to have something in the end—
I drew the gown over my head;
a red flush covered my face and shoulders.
It wi
ll run its course, the course of fire,
setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes.
You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face
as though you had felt it also—
you must have known, then, how I wanted you.
We will always know that, you and I.
The proof will be my body.
(1982)
SANDRA ALCOSSER (BORN 1944)
By the Nape
Though sun rubbed honey slow
down rose hips, the world lost
its tenderness. Nipple-haired, joint-swollen,
the grasses waved for attention.
I wanted a watery demonstration for love,
more than wingpaper, twisted stalk of heartleaf.
Squalls rushed over pearling the world,
enlarging the smallest gesture, as I waited
for a drake in first winter plumage
to stretch his neck, utter a grunt whistle,
begin his ritualized display.
I’d held a wild mallard in my palm,
hoodlum heart whooping like a blood balloon.
I’d watched a woman suck coins
between her thighs and up inside her body.
How long she must have trained to let the cold world
enter so. The old man said his neighbor asked him
to milk her breasts, spray the walls, bathe in it.
That was his idea of paradise.
Sometimes I don’t know who I am—
my age, my sex, my species—
only that I am an animal who will love
and die, and the soft plumage of another body
gives me pleasure, as I listen for the bubbling
and drumming, the exaggerated drinking
of a lover rising vertically from the sedges
to expose the violet streaks inside his body,
the vulnerable question of a nape.
(1998)
PAUL VIOLI (BORN 1944)
Resolution
Whereas the porch screen sags from
The weight of flowers (impatiens) that grew
Against it, then piles of wet leaves,
Then drifted snow; and
Whereas, now rolled like absence in its
Drooping length, a dim gold wave,
Sundown’s last, cast across a sea of clouds
And the floating year, almost reaches
The legs of the low-slung chair; and
Whereas between bent trees flies
And bees twirl above apples
And peaches fallen on blue gravel; and
Whereas yesterday’s thunder shook blossoms
Off laurel the day after they appeared; and
Whereas in the dust, the fine and perfect
Dust of cat-paw prints scattered across
The gleaming car hood, something
Softer than blossoms falls away,
Something your lips left on mine; and
Whereas it’s anyone’s guess as to how long
It’s been since a humid day sank so low,
So far from the present that missing
Sensations or the sensation of something
Missing have left impressions in the air,
The kind a head leaves on a pillow; and
Whereas the last of ancient, unconvincing
Notions evaporate from the damp pages
Of thick, old books that describe how,
For instance, Time and Love once
Lay together here; how in a slurred flash
Of light she turned and waded back
Into the sea, and how the slack
Part of any day was and is
All in the way he, half
Asleep, felt her hand slip out of his; and
Whereas, the blue heron stands on the shore;
While the sleek heron turns, broad
To narrow, half hidden among the reeds;
Turning with the stealth, the sweep
Of twilight’s narrowing minute,
Of stillness taking aim; turning
Until it almost disappears into
The arrowhead instant the day disappears,
Until staring out of the reeds,
The aforementioned heron
Is more felt than seen; and
Whereas, you, with due forethought
And deliberation, bite into
An apple’s heart and wish it were your own
(1999)
ROBERT OLEN BUTLER (BORN 1945)
Walter Raleigh, courtier and explorer, beheaded by King James I, 1618
Bess my dear old queen my Elizabeth her lips brittle her body smelling sharply beneath the clove and cinnamon from her pomander she lies next to me in the dark still besmocked though the night is warm and she has asked me here at last and I am masted for her and her bedchamber is black as pitch so she is but a shadow no torch she cried as I entered upon pain of death and now we are arranged thus my own nakedness perhaps too quick she says call your new-found land the place of the virgin, Virginia, to honor my lifelong state and I flinch but her smock does rise and I find the mouth of her Amazon her long fingers scrawling upon my back a history of the world oh sir oh sir you have found the city of gold at last she says, knowing me well this fills my sails the jungles of ancient lands are mine my queen oh swisser swatter she cries and falls away and I lie beside her staring into the dark, and I am sated certainly, but the moment calls for some new thing, and I say wait, my queen and I am out her door to the nearest torch and I have already prepared the treasure from my new world, this sweet sotweed this tobacco, and I sail back and slip in beside her and we sit and we smoke
(2006)
ALAN FELDMAN (BORN 1945)
A Man and a Woman
Between a man and a woman
The anger is greater, for each man would like to sleep
In the arms of each woman who would like to sleep
In the arms of each man, if she trusted him not to be
Schizophrenic, if he trusted her not to be
A hypochondriac, if she trusted him not to leave her
Too soon, if he trusted her not to hold him
Too long, and often women stare at the word men
As it lives in the word women, as if each woman
Carried a man inside her and a woe, and has
Crying fits that last for days, not like the crying
Of a man, which lasts a few seconds, and rips the throat
Like a claw—but because the pain differs
Much as the shape of the body, the woman takes
The suffering of the man for selfishness, the man
The woman’s pain for helplessness, the woman’s lack of it
For hardness, the man’s tenderness for deception,
The woman’s lack of acceptance, an act of contempt
Which is really fear, the man’s fear for fickleness,
Yet cars come off the bridge in rivers of light
Each holding a man and a woman.
(1970)
BERNADETTE MAYER (BORN 1945)
First turn to me…
First turn to me after a shower,
you come inside me sideways as always
in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,
then we take a nap, we’re late for school
you arrive at night inspired and drunk,
there is no reason for our clothes
we take a bath and lie down facing each other,
then later we turn over, finally you come
we face each other and talk about childhood
as soon as I touch your penis I wind up coming
you stop by in the morning to say hello
we sit on the bed indian fashion not touching
in the middle of the night you come home
from a nightclub, we don’t get past the bureau
next day it’s the table, and after that the chair
because I want so much to sit you down
& suck your cock
you ask me to hold your wrists, but then when I
touch your neck with both my hands you come
it’s early morning and you decide to very quietly
come on my knee because of the children
you’ve been away at school for centuries, your girlfriend
has left you, you come four times before morning
you tell me you masturbated in the hotel before you came by
I don’t believe it, I serve the lentil soup naked
I massage your feet to seduce you, you are reluctant,
my feet wind up at your neck and ankles
you try not to come too quickly
also, you don’t want to have a baby
I stand up from the bath, you say turn around
and kiss the backs of my legs and my ass
you suck my cunt for a thousand years, you are weary
at last I remember my father’s anger and I come
you have no patience and come right away
I get revenge and won’t let you sleep all night
we make out for so long we can’t remember how
we wound up hitting our heads against the wall
I lie on my stomach, you put one hand under me
and one hand over me and that way can love me
you appear without notice and with flowers
I fall for it and we become missionaries
you say you can only fuck me up the ass when you are drunk
so we try it sober in a room at the farm
we lie together one night, exhausted couplets
and don’t make love. does this mean we’ve had enough?
watching t.v. we wonder if each other wants to
