by David Lehman
drink
poured another.
she was
good.
she had a college
degree
some place back
East.
“get it, Helga, get
it!”
there was a loud
knock
on the front
door.
“HANK, IS HELGA
THERE?”
“WHO?”
“HELGA!”
“JUST A MINUTE!”
“THIS IS NINA, I WAS
SUPPOSED TO MEET
HELGA HERE, WE HAVE A
LITTLE SURPRISE FOR
YOU!”
“YOU TRIED TO STEAL
MY WHISKEY, YOU
WHORE!”
“HANK, LET ME
IN!”
“get it, Helga, get
it!”
“HANK!”
“Helga, you fucking whore…
Helga! Helga! Helga!!”
I pulled away and
got up.
“let her in.”
I went to the
bathroom.
when I came out they
were both sitting there
drinking and smoking
laughing about
something.
then they
saw me.
“50 bucks,” said Nina.
“25 bucks,” I said.
“we won’t do it
then.”
“don’t then.”
Nina inhaled
exhaled.
“all right, you
cheap bastard, 25
bucks!”
Nina stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
she was the hardest
of them
all.
Helga stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
I poured a
drink.
“sometimes I wonder
what the hell is
going on
around here,” I
said.
“don’t worry about
it, Daddy, just
get with it!”
“just what am I
supposed to
do?”
“just do
whatever the fuck
you feel
like doing,”
said Nina
her big ass
blazing
in the
lamplight.
(1992)
HAYDEN CARRUTH (BORN 1921)
Assignment
“Then write,” she said. “By all means, if that’s
how you feel about it. Write poems.
Write about the recurved arcs of my breasts
joined in an angle at my nipples, how
the upper curve tilts toward the sky and the lower
reverses sharply back into my torso,
write about how my throat rises from the supple
hinge of my collarbones proudly so to speak
with the coin-sized hollow at the center, write
of the perfect arch of my jaw when I hold
my head back—these are the things in which I too
take delight—write how my skin is
fine like a cover of snow but warm and soft and
fitted to me perfectly, write the volupté
of soap frothing in my curling crotch-hair, write
the tight parabola of my vulva that resembles
a braided loop swung from a point,
write the two dapples of light on the backs
of my knees, write my ankles so neatly turning
in their sockets to deploy all the sweet
bones of my feet, write how when I am aroused
I sway like a cobra and make sounds
of sucking with my mouth and brush my nipples
with the tips of my left-hand fingers, and then
write how all this is continually pre-existing in my
thought and how I effect it in myself
by my will, which you are not permitted to understand.
Do this. Do it in pleasure and with
devotion, and don’t worry about time. I won’t
need what you’ve done until you finish.”
(1991)
RICHARD WILBUR (BORN 1921)
A Late Aubade
You could be sitting now in a carrel
Turning some liver-spotted page,
Or rising in an elevator-cage
Toward Ladies’ Apparel.
You could be planting a raucous bed
Of salvia, in rubber gloves,
Or lunching through a screed of someone’s loves
With pitying head,
Or making some unhappy setter
Heel, or listening to a bleak
Lecture on Schoenberg’s serial technique.
Isn’t this better?
Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste,
Such things, thank God, not being to your taste.
Think what a lot
Of time, by woman’s reckoning,
You’ve saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss
Than anything.
It’s almost noon, you say? If so,
Time flies, and I need not rehearse
The rosebuds-theme of centuries of verse.
If you must go,
Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.
(1969)
JAMES SCHUYLER (1923–1991)
A photograph
shows you in a London
room: books, a painting,
your smile, a silky
tie, a suit. And more.
It looks so like you
and I see it every day
(here, on my desk)
which I don’t you. Last
Friday night was grand.
We went out, we came
back, we went wild. You
slept. Me too. The pup
woke you and you dressed
and walked him. When
you left, I was sleeping.
When I woke there was
just time to make the
train to a country dinner
and talk about ecstasy.
Which I think comes in
two sorts: that which you
know “Now I’m ecstatic”
like my strange scream
last Friday night. And
another kind, that you
know only in retrospect:
“Why, that joy I felt
and didn’t think about
when his feet were in
my lap, or when I looked
down and saw his slanty
eyes shut, that too was
ecstasy. Nor is there
necessarily a downer from
it.” Do I believe in
the perfectibility of
man? Strangely enough,
(I’ve known unhappiness
enough) I
do. I mean it,
I really do believe
future generations can
live without the intervals
of anxious
fear we know between our
bouts and strolls of
ecstasy. The struck ball
finds the pocket. You
smile some years back
in London, I have
known ecstasy and calm:
haven’t you, too? Let’s
try to understand, my
handsome friend who
wears his nose awry.
(1974)
LOUIS SIMPSON (BORN 1923)
Summer Storm
; In that so sudden summer storm they tried
Each bed, couch, closet, carpet, car-seat, table,
Both river banks, five fields, a mountain side,
Covering as much ground as they were able.
A lady, coming on them in the dark
In a white fixture, wrote to the newspapers
Complaining of the statues in the park.
By Cupid, but they cut some pretty capers!
The envious oxen in still rings would stand
Ruminating. Their sweet incessant plows
I think had changed the contours of the land
And made two modest conies move their house.
God rest them well, and firmly shut the door.
Now they are married Nature breathes once more.
(1949)
ROBIN BLASER (BORN 1925)
2nd Tale: Return
the oldest one and his sister and brother were
lost and he thought, telling a story
will keep fear away. so he began
the right path is further to your left
where the well is. and he looked
into the water and the water looked
back. now it is certain that water
is a magical substance. it will drink
up all things. and I am told this is
most like love, who stood near the
high way, and because it is one of
the few bare places the world has
ever known, love asked directions,
but the high way ran on. now it is
certain that the high way is a magical
substance, it will lead inside the
shape of things. and I am told this
is most like love, who has an amazing
ability to surprise travellers. love
asked the first hitch-hiker to spend
the night with him at the side of the
high way, but the hiker went on. now
it is certain that a hitch-hiker is
a magical substance which moves along.
and I am told this is most like love,
who has an amazing ability to pass on.
love, then, was quite alone the next
morning, and he stood stock-still
trying to understand, because in the
bright sun, the high way appeared to go
straight on without curves, turn-offs
or junctions into a kind of watery
air. the rule is, walk on the left
side facing traffic if you don’t want
to be killed. this love did
until after a very long time, he
entered the watery air, which I
remember, is when
they were found
(1969)
KENNETH KOCH (1925–2002)
To Orgasms
You’ve never really settled down
Have you, orgasms?
Restless, roving, and not funny
In any way
You change consciousness
Directly, not
Shift of gears
But changing cars
Is more like it. I said my prayers
Ate lunch, read books, and had you.
Someone was there, later, to join me and you
In our festivity, a woman named N.
She said oh we shouldn’t do
This I replied oh we should
We did and had you
After you I possess this loveable
Person and she possesses me
There is no more we can do
Until the phone rings
And then we start to plan for you again
And it is obvious
Life may be centered in you
I began to think that every day
Was just one of the blossoms
On the infinitely blossoming
Tree of life
When it was light out we’d say
Soon it will be dark
And when it was dark
We’d say soon it will be light
And we had you.
Sometimes
We’d be sitting at the table
Thinking of you
Or of something related to you
And smiled at other times
Might worry
We read a lot of things about you
Some seemed wrong
It seemed
Puzzling that we had you
Or rather that you
Could have us, in a way,
When you wished to
Though
We had to wish so too
Ah, like what a wild person
To have in the Berkeley apartment!
If anyone knew
That you were there! But they must have known!
You rampaged about we tried to keep you secret.
I mentioned you to no one.
What would there be to say?
That every night or every day
You turned two persons into stone
Hit by dynamite and rocked them till they rolled,
Just about, from bed to floor
And then leaped up and got back into bed
And troubled you no more
For an hour or a day at a time.
(2000)
A. R. AMMONS (1926–2001)
Their Sex Life
One failure on
Top of another
(1990)
PAUL BLACKBURN (1926–1971)
The Once-Over
The tanned blond
in the green print sack
in the center of the subway car
standing
tho there are seats
has had it from
1 teen-age hood
1 lesbian
1 envious housewife
4 men over fifty
(& myself), in short
the contents of this half of the car
Our notations are:
long legs, long waists, high breasts (no bra), long
neck, the model slump
the handbag drape & how the skirt
cuts in under a very handsome
set of cheeks
‘stirring dull roots with spring rain’, sayeth the preacher
Only a stolid young man
with a blue business suit and the New York Times
does not know he is being assaulted
So.
She has us and we her
all the way to downtown Brooklyn
Over the tunnel and through the bridge
to DeKalb Avenue we go
all very chummy
She stares at the number over the door
and gives no sign
Yet the sign is on her
(1958–1960)
ALLEN GINSBERG (1926–1997)
Love Poem on Theme by Whitman
I’ll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridegroom and the
bride,
those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,
arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,
bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,
and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,
legs raised up crook’d to receive, cock in the darkness driven tormented and
attacking
rouse up from hole to itching head,
bodies locked shuddering naked, hot lips and buttocks screwed into each other
and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,
and moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,
hands in moisture on softened hips, throbbing contraction of bellies
till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,
and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of
passion and compassion,
and I rise up from the bed replenished with last i
ntimate gestures and kisses of
farewell—
all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened house
where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,
nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.
(1963)
JAMES MERRILL (1926–1995)
Peeled Wands
Peeled wands lead on the pedophile. Give me
Experience—and your limbs the prize.
Too scarred and seasoned for mere jeopardy
Ever now to fell them, trunk and thighs
Rampant among sheet lightning and the gruff
Thunderclap be our shelter. Having both
Outstripped the ax-women, enough
Uneasy glances backward! Nothing loath!
Roving past initial bliss and pain
Visited upon you, I have gone bare
Into the thicket of your kiss, and there
Licked from that sly old hermit tongue—
Life’s bacon not yet cured when we were young—
Eternal oaths it swore with a salt-grain.
(1988)
FRANK O’HARA (1926–1966)
To the Harbormaster
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,