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
Male and Female
The Lengthy Story
(2020, Stephanie Foster)