Male and Female (poem)

 

 

 

Male and Female

 

You might be nothing much

a hatchback human utilitarian, cute thing

a nice or not nice

who says I’m not

named with a name without a hope for yourself

the profile of a popular young’un

a ranch hand from a feet up, TV on

waiting out the ninth month harlequin, a chase, a wyatt

a movie kid, precocious little mensa-ling, a riley or a jess

worried chastity and reins on, helen, mary ann

you came with a best-by date, and it doesn’t alter

 

he recalled

she would enter the bathroom when they’d got that close

Would you hate it if I had my neck done?

Not that it’s your business, ha ha, if I do or don’t

an idea of separate estates of what it is to date

came back and he began to think, if I had a bedroom of my own

if we spent money on the house, he said

we aren’t spending money, she said

but…your neck

oh, christ

 

he forgot her neck

he forgot buttoning her jeans

while she held her diaphragm sucked into her ribs

he forgot that she joked and fell to anger

he did not forget no place to put a foot

but split he doubted accident would cross his path

again

 

she remembered laudatory words

the boy-auteur who’d given her a walk-on

this large fat woman acting her only role

by critics’ circles spoken of for prizes

she from a girlfriend’s corner seeing the poor soul

roll out under lights course tears at a false son’s

inconstancy

the tears were physical pain

the producer cracked wise whispering in her ear obscene

if they’d known him

the good folk tut-tutting when the fat woman died

would still have hired the man and cast her aside

 

 

 

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Male and Female

The Lengthy Story

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2020, Stephanie Foster)