VENUS-MARS DIALOGUE
      Mitchell Geller
      (Desert Moon Review)

“Men are all bastards and women are bitches,”
She said as she emptied her second large glass.
“Women are bastards, and men can be bitches!”
He said, and he knows it, as sometimes he switches
To priapic bulges from pandoric niches,
Though both, they agree, are a pain in the ass.

“Men treat me badly. They take me for granted,”
She groaned, and the Liebfraumilch label just grinned.
“Women don’t want me until I have panted,
And poetry drips from my lips!” While he ranted,
She took a new bottle and swiftly decanted
It into their glasses like rain in the wind.

“Men have it easy. They don’t have to hassle
With birth control compact or IUD coil.
They all want a woman to maintain a castle
Where he can be king so that she can be vassal!”
“Oh, bullshit,” he said, “That’s a little too facile.
Your one-sided view simply makes my blood boil!”

“Oh, does it?” she stormed, “Well, you’re never the victim
Of hard-hats who gawk when you walk down the street!”
“Neither are you” he guffawed, and she kicked him.
(In accordance with her self-defense teacher’s dictum.)
“Well when they do gawk, you do not contradict ’em!”
He accused, and then both of them rose to their feet,

Quite unsteadily. Both looked exceedingly haggard.
“You’re a pig!” she declared, “just a chauvinist boor.
You’re a sexist, a swine, you’re the worst sort of blackguard!”
“I’m not. I am liberated,” he proudly swaggered,
And then, arm-in-arm, with the bottle, they staggered
Into the bedroom and closed the door.

detachable me
      Katy Maslow
      (The Critical Poet)

I can’t tell any more
if you are walking toward or away

still subway and street curvature draws you
with my hazy lazy eye, a sketch
of shoulders and jawbone browned with hazel freckles

come summer everything weighs more
until the humid limp you looked so good on paper

I keep walking past the place you stopped
intent on blindness being merely the sweat in my eyes

*

I’m bent over looking through my knees
the cat reversed, his checkered linoleum reflection righted

beyond him the room is below my stalactite possessions
the escher-stair boxes of books ready to sell, ready to spill
the paintings propped against the ceilingfloor
all the smiles frown, all the heavens hell

I have no part in this except for the rushing
of blood the gravity of my cheeks and hair
the cat twining about my legs
above my head and so below

*

the great redrimmed eyeballs of my failing gerbers
frighten me terribly, madness would be so welcome now
hanging up my hatter thoughts midsentence and

simply plucking each sore petal, deconstructing
the death of a flower

how the body dies, drooping and beautiful
summer is coming like a sadist
with a torch to scorch, blister, peel

what is my skin? the color of a peach, the rind
so I move in tight circles searching for the pit.

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