Sex
Education
Shed already heard
all there was to
sex
from her school friends.
She understood it
as
the woman lies
down
and takes it from the
man.
So the book her mother
embarrassedly handed
her
was somewhat
redundant
but she took it to her
room
to read
anyhow.
It would have
been
just another school
primer
if it werent for
the illustrations.
Eggs like no eggs
shed ever seen.
A Labrador mum nursing
puppies.
Nothing new
there.
But a woman suckling a
baby was novel.
Shed heard the
rumor
but here was
evidence.
But body parts, in the
main,
were drawn, not
photographed.
The male looked like
something
boys scribbled in the
back of notebooks.
The girl was as flat
as the body she saw in
the mirror,
with dots for
nipples
and a curve like a smile
below.
In the last chapter,
there were a series of
shots
of two horses at it in a
field.
The stallion was in his
glory
but the mares face
was grim.
There was no
indication
that any good would ever
come of it.
The
Military
They were all
children,
no different from
me.
They played with toy
soldiers.
So did I.
We all turned our kitchen
tables
or bedrooms
floors
into our own personal
battlegrounds.
We decided who lived, who
died,
which army carried the
day,
which one was
vanquished.
Now, theyre older,
majors and colonels,
and they wage war for
real.
I am a poet.
I mean you know
harm.
Their toy soldiers
grew
into well-trained
fighting men.
Mine are stored in the
bottom of an attic trunk.
All of them regret what
they have done.
On A Desert
Road
The mind plays
tricks.
What I see
is not what I
get.
I talk in
monosyllables,
like steak chopped
up
for easy
ingestion.
More cactus.
More dust kicked up
by my wheel.
All around me
looks like the
death
of civilization
as we know it.
So dry,
it would pay good money
for my spit.
And, in the
distance,
a fake town
emerges
from the foothills
of phony
mountains.
Its a
ritual:
flat road,
barren ground,
mirage
and, not
forgetting,
nothing but static
on the radio.
Its how you
get
to where youre
going
in these
parts.
You start from
nowhere,
drive through a lot of
nothing.
The endpoint
only need be
a gas station and
convenience store.
Final destination has it
easy.