this year's version of last year's poetry

Portraits of Mary:

reading cummings and coming

and going from table to table

legs clenched
thighs tight

lip bleeding from the biting.
two shifts long words gone

from booth to table to stall

frantic dripping trips
spent touching

grasping for the head spin trembles.
wet-kneed workday fantasies of poetry

masturbating to the classics

and not even missing her periods.


waif-like, wraith-like and wanton.

she writes me in her sleep

cuckolded couplets of coupling

thighs clenched
legs tight

words bitten and bleeding.
lips quiver in anticipation

syllables quaver and stall

spent dripping trips
and frantic touching:

inversion, spins and trembling repetition.
work-kneed fantasies of poetry and

periodic weeping masturbation

cadaverous raindrops
fall like history.


this man does not approve.

(for last year's portrait click here)