Man Adrift

He felt at times as if he were still in the Navy,
adrift on the sea, peering down through the vents

the way he used to squint through binoculars
on deck duty, keeping a lookout for objects

of interest. Life in the attic was humdrum.
His motel was a drydocked boat whose guests

endlessly watched television, exchanged
banalites, had sex mainly under the covers

if they had sex at all--and gave him so little
to write about that sometimes he wrote nothing at all.



From The Voyeur's Motel by Gay Talese, The New Yorker, 11 April 2016. Submitted by DawnCorrigan.

Profits

in the
real sense
of the word,
pro that
wonderful,
fun, and
deliciously creative
force that
bathes the body
in delight and pleasure,

and what you are actually against is porn sex?

a kind of sex that is debased dehumanized formulaic and generic a kind of sex based not on individual fantasy play or imagination but one that is the result of an industrial product created by those who get excited not by bodily contact but by market penetration and �






profits.



From 'Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality' by Gail Dines, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), Preface, page x. Submitted by Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer.

You walk in

and my eyes catch fire, you touch
me and my skin's live wire,
and no matter tonight
how much I deny
her, I think I
am going
to die of
desire.

Doing your duty!

I�m a patriotic husband,
you my patriotic wife,
lemme book into ya camp
and manufacture life.

Only financially secure adults
in stable, committed, long-term
relationships should participate.



A song encouraging Singaporeans to have more babies, reported in Baby Love, The Economist, 25 July 2015. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

The first time has

never been easy for me,

the one in which lightness
is supposed to do the work -
I am only thinking

and there's no room for thinking
not in the walk,
not in the hands,
not on the bed, the first time,

I never had the ease
of talking, of letting talking,
of letting kiss, of letting a bed,
of letting it happen,
I never had the ease,

I will probably never have
the ease

and so these past years
I take care
and make myself unlovable,

'coz we never talked,
'coz I never talked,
an' then I just figured an' figured
an' we never talked,
and I never said, and you never talked,
an' I didn't ask, we didn't say, an' I figured
without you, I figured that I did not know,
and we never talked
then, or later,

and after that so much of me changed
so suddenly, I feared

being recognized.

Beds

- there've been many,
and I've sworn all of them to secrecy,
hoping mattresses keep their promise.

The one in Stokey

in the house behind the
Abney Park Cemetery

to which my mother, calling from Lucknow,
had said - "When you sleep, do not lie
facing the cemetery,"

though, often
in the evenings

I'd look at our backyard fence
running against the 18th century graves

- where an angel, an urn, a lion,
all contracted in cement, kept
an Anglican hymn-maker, kept 17 year old
world-war veterans, kept a girl who
"left us so suddenly and so irrevocably
in grief" -

and I did not think it was anything
particularly serious to be
facing them while
I slept.

My German and Greek room-mates
often partied, "facing the cemetery."


A year later, the single-bed in King's Cross,

on the fifth floor,
floated above police sirens
and bus horns,

and was stuck to the right wall of
the room that I'd expressly asked "should. face. outside."

the hostel warden - this nice white guy - was surprised,
"you're the first one to ask for a room facing the road,"
"I like the noise," I said. I did not say I'm from a bigger city,
 I'd sooner die than face the "serene," that
little patch of green for more than a day.

He smirked but let me have my choice.

That bed afforded the view
 of Constable churches, of a Punjabi grocer,
a car rental and a Tesco,

and it was on this bed
where we managed to do it
for the first time,

using face-cream as lube.

Sometime that year,
the bed in your downtown house
near Battery Park,

that I knew only for a night
while visiting New York,

where I made plans which were
(presciently) smaller than my hands,

where I looked down into your city

where even
the parking-lot at mid-night
seemed unbelievable to me,

where the bed, holding my knees,
and your umber skin, as you slept,
told me that the tense of desire
is always the future,

one in which no plan survives,
no suture holds,
no love keeps,

one in which you leave me, always,
so suddenly and so irrevocably
in grief

that night after night
beds now
are of a kind,

that have very little to do
with sleeping.

A brutal nadir

I took my seat
at the microfilm reader
and began to scroll
slowly
through the archives.

For the first hundred years,
as far as I could tell,
all that happened in America
was that various people
named Nathaniel
had purchased land
near rivers.

I scrolled faster,
finally reaching an account
of an early Colonial-era shaming.

On July 15, 1742,
a woman named Abigail,
her husband at sea,
had been found
"naked in bed
with one John Russell."

They were to be
"whipped at the public post
20 stripes each."

Abigail
was appealing the ruling,
but it wasn�t the whipping itself she wished to avoid.
She was begging the judge
to be whipped early,
before the town awoke.



From How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life by Jon Ronson, New York Times Magazine, 12 February 2015. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

As s/he logged on

to the Yahoo gay chat forum for the first time
with the username intersex90, the first
minute was 32 pings.

Of those 32 pings, only 31 were tarnished by
curiosity, and the remaining was an ad
for dick-size-enhancement.

"So what do you have down there?" gayboy94 said,
"I'm only asking," and s/he thought how "only
asking" when actually asking was redundant.

The ping bell didn't stop: delhi10inch said "I have never
met an intersex person," "Do you have sex?" "So you
have both penis and vagina, really? Hot!"

and when s/he thought, s/he'd log out because maybe
this is not the right chat forum, bottomboy95 said
'Yuck, how does someone even suck you,'

so right before logging out, nervous though, s/he be like,
on forum chat so all can see: "It's gorgeous down
there, & I do just fine, and yes, fuck you."

Kiss

The kiss on the cheek marks affection,
the kiss on the hand takes you nearer,

the kiss on the lips burns circumspection
to dust, the kiss on the neck dips you

headlong in lust, and when love exceeds
so much that it knows not what it implies,

you find yourself reaching and kissing him
on his eyes.

i want to 377 you so bad

till even the sheets hurt i want to
ache your knees singe your skin
line you brown breathe you in i want to
mouth you in words neck you in red
i want to beg your body insane into sepals
i want to 377 you like a star falling off the brown
i want to feel you till my nails turn water
i want to suck you seven different skies
i want to be a squatter in your head when
it sleeps when its dark i want to break laws
with you in bed and in streets and in parks

The Pornography of Everyday Life

Last year,
I woke up
in a hotel room
in Amsterdam.

There was
a woman
in my bed.

I looked
in the mirror
and saw
that my eyebrows
were gray.

I saw
that I was
forty.




Painter Alexander Melamid, quoted in Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm (Granta Books, 2014). Submitted by Howie Good.

"Should we go to mine,"

I said, but then feeling creepy,

added "or not, you must be sleepy."

He leaned nearer, "I'd just said

let's get out of here, no one's

sleepy, don't put words in my mouth."

Tingly, that this might go somewhere,

I shifted between legs, & didn't know

where to look, right or left, north

or south, tonight, there's just one

word I want to put in his mouth.

I Sext the Body Electric

Did you catch a poem published last year in The Awl by Patricia Lockwood titled �Rape Joke" which went viral?

Facebook and Twitter shares made Lockwood Internet-famous. She is not a poet laureate. She is not a professor (never finished college) and lives far from the hip places for poets in Lawrence, Kansas.


Her latest book of poems, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, has a number of "sexts" which are her short poems that are erotic and simultaneously ridiculous. Lockwood got attention for her tweets that were inspired by the Anthony Weiner scandal, which imagines surreal sex acts.

Here are two examples:

Sext: I am a water glass at the Inquisition. You are a dry pope mouth. You pucker; I wet you

Sext: I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me

"Rape Joke� changed things. People have said it is funny, harrowing, important and not worth considering. That kind of response gets my attention.

Lockwood is not an unknown. Her last collection, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black, made the New Yorker�s Best Books list for 2012.

Looking through the new collection you can find poems about sexed-up forest creatures that never appear in Disney films, the Loch Ness Monster, and Whitman and Dickinson appearing as ghosts. The poems swerve between hilarious and creepy, profane and profound.

Patricia Lockwood via Twitter

In a radio interview on Studio 260, she said �My baseline voice as a poet tends to be very serious, very grave. But in my life, I tend to be a funny person. It was a challenge that I set myself to try to integrate those two voices.�

Twitter posts ("tweets") are limited to 140 characters. Not a lot of space to compose.

Then again, Ezra Pound's famous little poem, "In a Station of the Metro," fits nicely, title and all with characters to spare.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;  
Petals on a wet, black bough.

One hundred and forty characters (including spaces and punctuation) makes for a long line of poetry.
The previous sentence is only 100 characters.

Robert Frost would have gone over by only 3 characters if he had tweeted:

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow

In this shortened month, our new prompt asks you for poems composed of tweets. By this we mean "stanzas" of 140 characters that can stand alone. You can thematically thread together as many as you wish though, so your poem can be as short as 140 characters and as long as 140 X ?  Line lengths are your choice, but stanza length is 140 characters. (If you use Twitter, you might want to compose there as it counts your characters automatically.)

To make thing more interesting for readers, we are asking you to make the topic of your poem sex. Of course, that means that the serious and the not-so-serious side of the topic is fair game.

Submissions due October 4, 2015

Window in the House of Mirrors, Market Street, 1889

At the top
is a clear-eyed maiden
whose lips smile joy.
Below,
and to the left, framed
in long hair
is a horribly sensuous face,
one
eye closed in a leer
above
thick slobbering lips.

Next, is the stupid fat face
of a glutton. Then comes
the hard cold face
of a woman not much
older than the young girl above,
the fifth
face. In the narrow
ell of the house,
behind her is that embittered
old man with cruel eyes,
his hairy moustache
cushioning bulbous jaws.



A description from a file in Denver Public Library of stone carvings on an old Colorado brothel. Via Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves (1994, Wesanne Publications). 'Cushioned' changed to 'cushioning'. Submitted by Angela Readman.

THIS IS NOT A LOVE THING - The Harlot�s Progress 2014

1. Arrival in London

Boy have you been a lucky girl
new in town and everybody�s
darling: love, desire and a tender
touch always has the boys high
for candy kisses, little miss.

Beware the late night
luxury love, enjoy the
good times - for a day.


2. Quarrel with her protector

Introducing a girl in a million.
A young mistress, tamed and trained
with a luxury new apartment
and a wardrobe full of fun and games.

She�s fresh and lovely, a cherry ripe
English rose. Fresh and green
she must be seen.


3. Apprehended by a Magistrate

Come on gentlemen
report now!
She�s a genuine siren
talented and in control.

Urgent, be warned � your afternoon
fun just got sensored:
it�s playtime with visiting
magistrates now!!


4. Scene in Bridewell

So, a total transformation for
the country girl � complete captivation
caged amd reduced to tears. A taste of
no mercy, a broken sentence.

Bow and show repentance.


5. She expires while doctors quarrel

Great, she�s back!
In town, in pain. Feel
the sensation � it�s agony
she has friends: caring,
friendly and understanding
a lifetime too late. Ouch!


6. The funeral

Demonstrate respect for the
pleasure princess. This is not
a love thing, she�s heaven bound �
it�s judgement day for all.

Relax Venus
and enjoy the rest.



Taken from a series of 'tart cards' found in London phone boxes. The poem is a take on The Harlot's Progress by William Hogarth, using his original titles and featuring the found text to tell the story of each print. Submitted by Victoria Bean.

UKIP Weather Forecast: It�s Raining Men

A morning kiss between two consenting adults
will lead to drizzle on higher ground.
An area of blame will move in from the east
before drifting away and settling over Brussels.
Dark clouds are forming over the Midlands
following voluntary sexual intercourse
between two unmarried persons.
Temperatures will plummet as a result
of a man in Cumbria enthusiastically browsing
through a home furnishings catalogue.
The early sunshine in the Cotswolds
has been replaced by cloud after a man
spent a suspiciously long time grooming his facial hair.
The sun makes a brief appearance
after John Barrowman stubs his toe
on the corner of a wardrobe.



Compiled from tweets by @UkipWeather in response to UKIP Councillor David Silvester's remarks linking bad weather to same-sex marriage. Submitted by Angi Holden.