Not a Love Poem
You asked me why I never wrote you a poem.
I said I don’t write love poems.
In this age of increasing specialization,
I’m a poet dealing strictly in pestilence —
Lousy children,
Lecherous uncles,
Escaped, deranged killers with at least one hand missing
Who butcher the countryside and, what’s worse, drool.
I can’t write of the time I lay down with a headache.
You glazed your hands with peanut oil
And hummed to me, and rubbed my feet.
Or the stir-fry you made the first time we ate in,
With Chinese hot peppers,
So many that I couldn’t breathe in the kitchen,
So we sat on the porch
And ate with the lights off,
And listened,
And stayed, too full to go in.