Unavoidably
the men with their
humble crotches
A house inside out. Or
are they ten?
Fucking against
gravity, I’ve never had much
of an affinity for lakes, fine
museums or very small scrotums
Always colluding, always
worshiping too many depressions
I am having shingles
I am pissing all over a dead man’s mattress
I am eating three eggs on white toast
Then my many bodies prologue
Who will be here to inseminate me tomorrow?
“You are always God damn
eroticizing the present tense”
Technically, I’m a hysteric
“Hotel robe”
“There’s no poetry to
be had here unless it’s physical!”
“Thumb in my mouth”
“Hot on the case
of a missing baby”
The birds, she explains, are
language. Finger them
According to my source
the small bit of flesh
lodged between vagina
& anus
is a sign of her weathers
hickory stick
the last bit of fruit
jam left in the jar
Or, in other words
there have always been men who
have a long, messy history of
biting down too hard on cheap
supermarket dates
Ann is the author of The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in Posit, Texas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, the Dialogist, Barrow Street, 2River, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Ann has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”. She graduated from Bard College with a degree in English Literature, and has a Master’s in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley.