She is flinking

Tail in the sea, head on the rocks

Resting

A man spies her

He has serendibian blue eyes; he

Is a different species, foreign as a zebra.

Sweat beading on his head feels familiar.

She is touched by his baldness;

Her arms about his neck

Reading his body.

This reading is sexy

But it isn’t retelling Ariel’s story

Because a book is different than a baby. 

The biology of a mermaid

Giving birth is?

Now imagine

A mermaid writing.

Withdrawing from the water,

She scrawls her tale across paper after paper

The merwoman is a writer;

The poet is a merwoman.

Of Syllaships

And reading lists

It is safe to say a paperback

Weighing more than a water bottle

Is not a beach read,

But an odyssey.

She sweats sentences

As the sun rises to its zenith

Heating her barnacled bench. 

The ocean scales her body cobalt,

Bellbottom jeans make a mermaid’s tail

Slapping the sea instead of laughing.

The sea is salt and plot

More than reader response theory

Thoughtless she slips into the water:

Tank top, tale and all…

My father warned me about writers, but

My lover is a zebra.  Fingers galloping

Over typewriter keys clacking.

I keep his sheets of paper worn soft with

Marking my place within a novel. 

Vertical black stripes running

Through my books. 

At the heart of every story, I read,

Is poetry.  Sorry dad. 

Mom loved minor poets too.

In a gross act

Of anthropomorphization

A biologist learns that intellectuals and

Snails alike, have penises close to their brains.

Cupid evolved from Helix Aspersa

Yet this scientist would be pierced with gypsobelum

That potentially fatal dart of yours

Dear snail

During six hours of foreplay

While admiring your radula and chestnut whorls

Our squelching bodies possessed bilateral symmetry.

From this pair of feet, whose foot is whose? 

Calcareous shells clink. When I steal the covers,

I am not an easy person to sleep with.  Why?

Would you cuddle with a snail?

Because we were both once prey

For the carnivorous of our species feast on cardiac muscle.

Now, meet me in New Haven where we will be

Just another pair of garden gastropods

Right?

Before we

Were facebook friends.

I stared at your profile, hour

After hour muscular arms across chest

Hinting at your farmer’s tan and

Cerulean blue eyes.

Your eyes form very acute corners.

The same attraction as my first

Day school teacher.

Your smile was leftmost window

Open on my laptop.

My inspiration

While I wrote a paper,

Justifying my unpublished novel,

Concluding in a relationship,

With you.

I was trying to work

Swear! When distracted by a young female

Waterfowl. 

Precocious omnivore, she is

Sucking the dirt of my life from denim

Such stringy nutrients.

She deserves better

Than what is furnished by the poet,

Day old pastry.  Now

The young one needs

A napkin for the half masticated treat

Outlining her bill.

Gelatinous peach sticks.

Neither the Red Cross, nor Bio courses

Teach Heimlich on a mallard!

The satiated duckling naps

Across from the dreamland construction site

And I return to the computer

Domesticated.

My browser windows

Are a modern widows walk.

Your beast is a great white mass of

Printed and bound pages.  Publication is

The difference between an author

And a writer.

A harpoon is your sinister pen;

What do whales know of chirality?

I’m a biochemist.

Dear storyteller, I’m too full of you

For porcelain knobs, boys

And this poem…

“Tell me a story” because I feel very alone. 

Or tell me what novel I’m quoting.  Say that you love Jeanette Winterson’s writing.  Maybe you know Pew and have felt the salt spray breaking against the lighthouse walls too.  I haven’t touched a bald man’s head since Pew’s.  I could feel sweat and veins, the life in your brain.  The brain is wider than the sky I was taught in neurobiology and behavior. 

To be a writer is to write, I think.  You were a writer.  When was the last time?  How long is a long long time?  How do you think writing evolves?  Do writers need other writers in their lives?  Could you trace your intellectual lineage back to a famous author?  Tell me your favorite book?

Truthfully, I’ve never known a writer up close. 

What is sex a metaphor for? Pleasure

Flesh oiled and salted to taste, squelching on my

Tongue is Cupeidae’s family. 

Swallowing ends all.

In record-breaking heat I bathe

My baby with an ice cube. 

Together we slept outside and

Our night light, the full moon created

The curves of his face. My beautiful boy

In black and white photography. 

A playground scene.

Below the anthill, I reside in

A dark underworld of desire thrives

Where I am milking the blue caterpillar.

Truffle flavored smoke rises from his lips in

The summer of lager and honeydew.

He is feasting on my youth.

His chrysalis is a car; 

He will drive away from here.

But first he asks, “want to fork?”

“Yes, I have never liked spooning,” I respond.

“A fork makes a poor microphone,” I shout.

Imperfect passion, the love is not faulty

The lovers are like Alice talking to Absolem.

Answer 1- my cognitive unconscious

Answer 2- storyteller

How many times do you have to make love?