by Allison Jenks

Published in Issue No. 4 ~ July, 1996

No girl can undress your tale like me.
My estrogen drives into those Day-dark Egyptian eyes-
Gyrating you in my festivals of laughter.

There is some scholarly umbrella around you
But you talk in grammar school analogies-
Cornored in my life like rusty chimes or a hole in
the couch that I cover up and won’t throw away.

You’re worn down-Living on vitamins and excuses.
I want to do something for you
When you look at me like a dying doctor.
But what can I do except suggest better excuses
and peel off more of your skin.

Maybe I’ll let you talk
Down to me if it
Jams you up like a teething earthquake.

I know the music stops when I leave
Your visions frying loose and drunk
As your lips turn bitterly into lemon shreds

And I’m like a book mark to you-
A toasty forefront to underground wizards.

Flinging you into
Sermons of Global Vigils-
Luminescent night-warmers.
And you feel primal.

Would it stop you if you knew
I’m using you like salt in a Martini
while the prickly joke stabs
Bravo into my face.

I talk down to you really but I listen
to the putrid smell of your organisms,
Animating your pitiable outcome.

You think I’m the type of girl that listens.
I’ve always crept up on flashy guys like you,
Making you ardor women through me
Begging you not to love me.

I’m disgusted with the miserable emergencies
that induce you to me.
Even more for your wanting to need something
that you don’t need.

When the me in you wears you down
you’ll be one of the few men who know respect.
But you’ll still be the caboose
Dragged by juicy women
into the faint, Molecular destiny
of your impotency.

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Allison Jenks' poems have appeared in : New Orleans Review, Art Times, Wisconsin Review, American Literary Review, and Midwest Poetry Review. She was a James A. Michener fellow, awarded by John Balaban, at the University of Miami's M.F.A. program, where she was Editor In Chief of Mangrove.