Written by
Denise Duhamel |
They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket.
His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance.
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips,
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls,
up until now, have done neither of them much good.
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body
under the weight of Ken's face.
He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite.
And she is imagining
she is somebody else-- maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.
The night had begun with Barbie getting angry
at finding Ken's blow up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch.
He was defensive and ashamed, especially about
not having the breath to inflate her.
But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work.
With their good memories
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth.
When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned.
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark,
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids.
Then, they let themselves go-- Soon Barbie was begging Ken
to try on her spandex miniskirt.
She showed him how
to pivot as though he was on a runway.
Ken begged
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her
on the kitcen table until she grew dizzy.
Anything,
anything, they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.
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Written by
Robert Burns |
MY curse upon your venom’d stang,
That shoots my tortur’d gums alang,
An’ thro’ my lug gies mony a twang,
Wi’ gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
Like racking engines!
When fevers burn, or argues freezes,
Rheumatics gnaw, or colics squeezes,
Our neibor’s sympathy can ease us,
Wi’ pitying moan;
But thee—thou hell o’ a’ diseases—
They mock our groan.
Adown my beard the slavers trickle
I throw the wee stools o’er the mickle,
While round the fire the giglets keckle,
To see me loup,
While, raving mad, I wish a heckle
Were in their doup!
In a’ the numerous human dools,
Ill hairsts, daft bargains, cutty stools,
Or worthy frien’s rak’d i’ the mools,—
Sad sight to see!
The tricks o’ knaves, or fash o’fools,
Thou bear’st the gree!
Where’er that place be priests ca’ hell,
Where a’ the tones o’ misery yell,
An’ ranked plagues their numbers tell,
In dreadfu’ raw,
Thou, TOOTHACHE, surely bear’st the bell,
Amang them a’!
O thou grim, mischief-making chiel,
That gars the notes o’ discord squeel,
Till daft mankind aft dance a reel
In gore, a shoe-thick,
Gie a’ the faes o’ SCOTLAND’S weal
A townmond’s toothache!
|
Written by
Alexander Pope |
Two or three visits, and two or three bows,
Two or three civil things, two or three vows,
Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs,
Two or three Jesus's - and let me dies-
Two or three squeezes, and two or three towses,
With two or three thousand pound lost at their houses,
Can never fail cuckolding two or three spouses.
|
Written by
Thomas Lux |
They are, the surfaces, gorgeous: a master
pastry chef at work here, the dips and whorls,
the wrist-twist
squeezes of cream from the tube
to the tart, sweet bleak sugarwork, needlework
toward the perfect lace doily
where sit the bone-china teacups, a little maze
of meaning maybe in their arrangement
sneaky obliques, shadow
allusives all piling
atop one another.
Textures succulent but famished,
banal, bereft.
These surfaces,
these flickering patinas,
through which,
if you could drill, or hack,
or break a trapdoor latch, if you could penetrate
these surfaces' milky cataracts, you
would drop,
free-fall
like a hope chest full of lead
to nowhere, no place, a dry-wind, sour,
nada place,
and you would keep dropping,
tumbling, slow
motion, over and over for one day, six days, fourteen
decades, eleven centuries (a long time
falling to fill a zero) and in that time
not a leaf, no rain,
not a single duck, nor hearts, not one human, nor sleep,
nor grace, nor graves--falling
to where the bottom, finally, is again the surface,
which is gorgeous, of course,
which is glue, saw- and stone-dust,
which is blue-gray
ice, which is
the barely glinting grit
of abyss.
|
Written by
Omar Khayyam |
'Tis we who to wine's yoke our necks incline,
And risk our lives to gain the smiles of wine;
The henchman grasps the flagon by its throat
And squeezes out the lifeblood of the vine.
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