When a Woman Loves a Man by

When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
   is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
   another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
   airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
   she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

How to Write an Erotic Letter by Anthony Farrington

You must empty yourself first. Erase
everything you’ve written. If you’re naked,
revise all your clothes back on. Anyway,
they’re all you have. What matters
is the taking them off. Begin with a title
“Concerning insatiable carnal urges.”
Attach a handwritten note that says,
Keep your hair down and If you come here,
I’ll tell you something awful about someone perfect. Scathing
and lovely to hear. Remember,

each time, each letter is an entire love affair, say
‘A’ is for almost. ‘B’
is the emptiness that follows. The letter ‘O’
is what the body believes.

If she writes in a letter,
Sometimes our bodies are too much for us,
quote her. How she turns you on
turns her on. You can
quote me on that.

I am remembering the sweep of your hair, the light
on your breasts, your beautiful eyes expanding;
I am remembering the slickness inside you—
how wet, how deliciously warm. I think
of your uncontrollable breath; I think
of your nipples kissing my chest; I think
of your mouth on my neck and the sweet taste
of your tongue in my mouth.

Set aside nothing for later. Call this,
I was kissing and sucking and wanting so badly
to fuck you silly, silly. And erase it. But enjoy it first.

Feel free to write a pretend letter to her father.
Quote from it: “Dear her father, Sir, we are sorry to inform you, sir,
of the mysterious demise of your daughter. It seems she was somehow—
sorry to say this indelicately—fucked to death…obviously
a scandalous affair. Ropes and long-necked bottles and,
oh, we mustn’t go on. A man was dead too, sir—exhaustion it seems
or dementia. With sincere regrets,
I am yours.”

If she uses the word fuck in her letters
you use the word fuck
but at the end of the letter only. This
is not prudery, it is teasing
and she will appreciate it.

I want my face in your hair,
your perfume in my breath,
my finger tips softly
touching the sides of your ribs, your waist,
your thighs, your breast, your face—what is important here,
in this letter, your hand must touch her, in this letter,
so she wants, over and over, what is not there.

If you’re foolish enough to write Oh God prematurely,
you deserve what you don’t get. As a cautionary measure,
delete all references to god: Jesus it feels so good and Holy shit.
Consider keeping: God, you are so slick; so goddamn delicious.
But you’ve already used slick once. Now three times. There is nothing wrong
with I want to hear your voice coming and coming
but admit, it’s a one-shot phrase.

Damp cotton will open caves in your mind.
Promise her: I need you
electric in my mouth. Write: Concerning the art of seduction
and leave it at that. Tease her: Truth or dare? End
before you’ve said everything. Realize

everything you are, in this letter, precedes you—
which is the loneliness of writing. What you want
is never now. That’s the essence of desire. What she reads is always past;

that’s despair. Think about how—
if she could—she would swallow the world
(pillow and all) take it all inside—
all of you—so it could come shattering out
again. But don’t fool yourself,

this letter needs to be filled with sorrow. Write:
Sometimes I wish I could be in your body
so I could feel what you feel. Sometimes,
I wish you could be in my body—your own name amazingly
on the tip of your new tongue, the smell of you
(I mean me) in your fresh mind,
seeing your old body arch away from your new body,
hearing seeing feeling what was once you
hold her breath; hearing her becoming, coming

apart all around you. And then your own foreign release
beyond your whole body. The cracking—
it feels so open—this desire, almost to weep. Then
weep. In the space of a letter you once were.

Nobody But You by Charles Bukowski

nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly
inside.

nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don't, don't, don't.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?

nobody can save you but
yourself
and you're worth saving.
it's a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.

think about it.
think about saving your self.

This Is Not an Elegy by Catherine Pierce

At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant,
my fingernails chewed to half-moons.
I took off my clothes in a late March
field. I had secret car wrecks,
secret hysteria. I opened my mouth
to swallow stars. In backseats
I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust,
and distance. I was unformed and total.
I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops
stopped coming around. The heat lifted
its palms. The radio lost some teeth.

Now I see the landscape behind me
as through a Claude glass—
tinted deeper, framed just so, bits
of gilt edging the best parts.
I see my unlined face, a thousand
film stars behind the eyes. I was
every murderess, every whip-
thin alcoholic, every heroine
with the silver tongue. Always young
Paul Newman’s best girl. Always
a lightning sky behind each kiss.

Some days I watch myself
in the third person, speak to her
in the second. I say: I will
meet you in sleep. I will know you
by your stillness and your shaking.
By your second-hand gown.
By your bruises left by mouths
since forgotten. This is not
an elegy because I cannot bear
for it to be. It is only a tree branch
against the window. It is only a cherry
tomato slowly reddening in the garden.
I will put it in my mouth. It will
be sweet, and you will swallow.

Hot Amoeba Ass by Tao Lin

at kinko's i blew-up the slide of the amoeba's ass 10,000,000 times

i took the amoeba ass photos out in the taxi cab and quietly said, 'oh my god'

at kinko's i said, 'are you sure you can't make it any bigger?'

i sweated and fell down screaming, 'it can't go any bigger, it can't go any bigger!'

i called my mother and hanged up sweating

i removed the bed, table, desk, and chair from my room

i pasted amoeba ass photos on the floor, ceiling, and walls

i fell down masturbating

i stared at the $100,000 electron-scanning microscope on the computer screen

driving home from the biochemical store i fell out of the car screaming, 'amoeba ass is so hot!'

in my room i broke the microscope and rubbed the slide sample on my face

i very quietly went to the corner of my room and sat down shaking

i hugged myself and stared with a worried expression and quietly thought, 'there are five billion hot amoeba asses on my face'

I Have No Ambitions by Ellen Kennedy

i don't want to hate the president

i don't want to go to harvard

i don't want to win the pulitzer prize

i just want to sit in my bathtub

and think about relationships i will never have

with people i will never meet

and then go lay in my bed

with a magnifying glass

and count all the stiches in my sheets

until i fall asleep

and wake up

to repeat again.

I Want To Kill Everyone You Know And Then Myself By Ellen Kennedy

stop staring at me

my body is so small compared to the sun

my heart is so small

A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Yes Nothing Real Will Be Achieved Sorry There's Nothing I Can Do by Brandon Scott Gorrell

there is nothing i can do to not die
i want to not die
my excitement level can only reach a certain point
excitement levels beyond this point are unattainable
because i know i will fall asleep
and later wake up
to assume the same sense of existence that changes, only minutely
of which the aggregate i can understand only later, when i am a different person
the entire timespan of my face is no different than the evolution of geographical landscapes
tentatively i wish i could chew your face for a couple minutes
i want to touch your breasts
i know that i would not like being your boyfriend
that our sex would be awkward with fuck-ups; with passive aggressive statements; with frustration; with an exasperation rooted in unsatisfaction with too strong a feeling of detachment
i have a door that opens
when will you walk through it?
my house will not move
it would be relieving to one day watch my house stand up and walk somewhere
i can do anything; destroy the world
write a novel that results in the achievement of my goals
find the perfect woman
but then it will be the year 695999285
take my photo i will decide if it can go on my myspace profile
take my photo i'll better understand which facial expression to regularly assume
no one is ever going to know me and this may be true and i want to believe this
but i am so very afraid that you are so very advanced and that you will know me
immediately and i can do nothing but exist until the end
and if that is the case you are my god
and you are the unattainable fountain of youth as well
and you are such, such horror
and you are everything that i want embodied
and everything that makes me obsolete and horrible
and then it is the year 695999285
and then what
and then what

Single Girl. One Room Flat. by Lynn Emanuel

Even the butter's a block of sleazy light.

We see that first, as though we're dreary guests come to dreary supper.
We're at her table; its scrubbed deal is trim and lonely as a cot.
It's food for one, and everything we've ever hated, here a plate of pallid
grays and whites is succotash—and chops are those dark shapes glaring up at us.
Are you going to eat this, we want to ask; she's at the stove dishing up,
bricked up in that black apron reserved for maids and waitresses.
She's still a servant. Even here. So she has to clean her plate.
It's horrible to watch. Like the sad methodical rhythm of sobbing.
She pokes the bits of stuff into her mouth, and chews, and sips the glass of water
and stares at the power of the salt. The roll's glued shut like a little box
with all that sticky butter. The whole meal's so mechanical and chaste,
we wonder why she's bothered. Is this all working gets you?
Worried and fed up we wander to the single window with its strict bang
of blind. Our eyes pick and fidget, scratch at the door like a dog wanting out.
The whole room looks shelved and flattened, a valise packed with nothing.
She's at the bureau, now. Lining up the bobby pins. The room's a gun stuck
in her back. Don't move, it says. We look at the plate flanked by fork and spoon.
Even the scraps are neatly stacked. There's nothing left. This wasn't a meal,
it was a prayer. Mother, protect me. I'm one uncontrollable hunger away from ruin.