Martin Golan

This poem addresses the odd phenomenon of reading poetry in public, in a magazine, or, for that matter, on a website like this. It appears in the current issue of the magazine Lips.

A Poem about Sex

Now that I’ve got your attention let me say
that this poem thinks it’s about sex, but it’s really about itself
It’s a poem gazing in the mirror
studying its eyes to find out who it is.
It sits here on the page pretending it just happens to be there
though you know of course it got all dolled up for you
tried on one rhythm
then changed into another
it's following you
out of the corner of its lines
It wants you
to pick it up and take it home

Where
You will touch this poem
the way it always wanted to be touched
in a place it’s never been touched before
It seeks intimacy above all, no matter what it claims. Passion. Romance. Obsession
To be on your mind later when you are alone
That should be obvious by now
So dream yourself inside it, pretend you know what the poet meant.
Seduce his flirt of a poem
make it
take off its words for you

And only then
will it whisper to you in the dark
of the dying light of a winter afternoon
of the way the flesh curves at the small of her back
of the friends he had who died too young
of the best friend who broke his heart
of that kiss from Harriet Miller, when he ended it decades ago
on some street corner on Long Island
before she turned and walked away, sobbing

Let me confess to you now: at one time I saw sex
as just a reaching out into the void
and taking. But I’ve learned
it’s not a stroke or a thrust or a grab
but the closing of a circle,
that leads back to you, to itself
to the thing you tried to take
to the thing you name in the dark
to the thing that poems are

So do it with this poem
It’s the same as you
It wants to be taken
It wants to be yours

– Martin Golan

Read another poem by Martin Golan,
on adoption, published in Pedestal magazine