Pearshaped, cold, a tangle of urges,
vegetarian and nauseatingly healthy to the
daycare crowds who decide how children
will become kind in spite of the impersonal blows,

my son prevails. He has no religion
except the mania of his mother, no
license except his father’s lust for vindication.
He will survive well, like a shepherd.

At the moment I can tell him I’m bound to tell
the truth, but the fact is it’s horseshit
for the time being, circumscribed by dogshit,
rabbitshit, catshit, and just plain human shit.

Nevertheless, while I measure this woman’s breasts
against my honesty while my son sleeps
I imagine her bracelets, his cowlick, and my
marriage ring sinking together in Tennessee mud,

and the absence of my wife, who never wore bracelets.
So it becomes a matter of love again, if it exists,
and the fatality of true marriage hacked
in half by an illness called civilization,

that survives in pieces anyway. How ironic
are these attempts to shape intimacy
while the woman is beside herself in sighs
and has forgotten me, her other lovers, and my penis.

Her fragrance fills this whole place, even the
water in the refrigerator, and remains for a day.
She won’t come back because I’m all anger and pain,
nothing new and no prize for an evening’s gamble.

April 7, 1984