by Amy Gerstler
He touches her right breast.
She turns fierce. If he fondles
the left, she grows melancholy
for years. Slowly she becomes
just one more pale criminal.
How tiresome. Nothing’s less
erotic than what he’s sure of.
Still, he craves a little certainty
to offset the threat of the lesions
he reads about lately:
those puckered flowers—
the first signal the nervous system
is turning to quicksand.
Men once believed plagues
were inflicted by blasts
of hot air, not unlike the gasps
of her complaint-tainted breath.
If only it were that simple.