TWO POEMS
Amy Lemmon
Nicholsonesque
after Hart Crane I am not the crazy one. It's you, it's them, it's him, it's her. It's that nurse, the murdered spirit in the old hotel, that wretched yapping dog, that editor, those three poufy-haired, scarfy-garbed bitches, the beggar on the street, the short-order cook who screwed up my eggs and toast. You make me wanna be a better man. Ya think? Try me. Tell me what that would look like. Or, better, show me. Who among you is not mad, let him take the first pill, take the first unsolicited phone call, answer the damn door, grab the ball and run with it across the yard of the asylum. The eybrow? The smirk? The growl and snarl pitched to perfection? All an act, for laffs, to mask my sanity. I know none of you really want to be here with me, none of you want me here. You can't handle the truth. But you won't ever leave or make me leave. Here's why: I show you how you really are, or would but for the bloody grace of God. So go and get your little chip, your token, hold your thirty days in your hand. I'll pry open your fingers one by one without laying a single one of mine on you.
Glory
Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness, the fullness…I overflow. Anais Nin to Henry Miller, March 26, 1932 Never one for restraint under ordinary circumstances, how can I help but throw in my hat and roll with you right now into such riches, take on the precious weight of your frame, accept your mouth and join the pageant of your two hard arms, taut belly, the grand unfurling of your sex? Wine-softened, bathed in blue light, we seek and find what we are after, two unstrung arrows a-quiver. Your talk, the voice softening from bray to breath-held whisper Make love to me words never so extraordinary as now, as here, not rug, not floor, but floating space, a levitation. You who once belonged to others are no one's now but your own moorings blown and sprinting to some middle distance. Surely soon enough this moment, too, will be dust in your wake. Yet now I will let myself be had and you will have and halve me, glad body victorious. As I do my own careful laps, building strength and resistance, then stretch my taxed quadriceps, little by little I will go farther and faster. Then, ground covered, miles logged, I will look back upon this sweet and burning time these days we cannot help but help ourselves to a banquet new and spilling—yes, we are together bounding, pounding hard into this whole new mess, all vain and glorious.