A Man Who Reads Poetry

she says, is my kinda macho —
eyes coursing the bellowing plains
of the page like Sythian horsemen,
and when I lean to be near,
his voice growls wild honey,
clenching thought sure as fists
on rope, pommel or rose,
a wrestler with joy, I’d plunge
the tunnels down to hell,
for those hands to do what
he whispers when he reads.

Listen, I say, have you heard
that young guy’s crap,
seen his cocky pose,
his mind half on rape,
half on singing how,
eyes raking like razors
along thighs and clipping
the pucker of nipples,
reading you like pornography
and translating for exposè
in rhyme to sell for whiskey,
coke, or any old quicky?

Were we discussing men?
she says. Don’t they all
keep that pet riding them
toward a fool?
I was thinking how this
makes them sing, sometimes well.
Besides, what are a girl’s choices
when molecules and God conspire,
insist, “multiply, replenish?”
and a macho must have his ways
before God and nature have theirs?
So, I’d have mine first
hearing how he woos.

Posted in response to the Ragtag Community Daily Prompt “quarry“. “A Man Who Reads Poetry was first appeared in the book Dazed Part of Light.