Poem With No Typos

 

Last night while sex with my boyfriend,
we found ourselves in a strange position—still

missionary—but think two tiny potato bugs crumpled 
into a little ball, just a sphere, but a sexual sphere,

when I ended up with my ear next to his ear,
and we each, for a while, listened to the other’s listening,

while our bodies forged on to collect their rations of good 
fucking. And what is that like? 

I cannot know unless I’m told.

 

 

Marked

 

The girl I’m letting stay with us 
put sticky hooks up on the wall by the front door, 
meant for backpacks, jackets, purses. 

Within days, all three of them fell, 
taking paint and a bit of the drywall each. 

When the first one came down, 
I thought nothing could go right for me. 
I’d banished myself from my life 

in the name of saving it— 
my backpack was fine on the floor.

That night I cooked red meat
I didn’t touch, fought flowers 
with the head of a pin. Nothing worked.

When the next one fell, 
ablution turned my favorite song. 

I stood in the shower long enough for the thought 
to go away, but drying my hair, I confused it
for my mother’s being rung out under a towel 

held by a man who mistook his family 
for an alibi and left that spring for the west.

The story of the third hook is different. 
I don’t pretend to know it, even having watched 
the wall shutter, a crack appearing beneath 

the little backpack. Even having peeled it off myself, 
weary of how much wall it might take with it otherwise.

I just know that in the days that followed,
whenever we walked through the door 
and kicked the hooks that lay beneath the busted wall—

I envied myself. I felt envious I was home.