10 December 1990
from PAGES TOWARD THE TURN OF THE YEAR
by Rika Lesser

plenty of food & water in
paradise but some
     confusion about sex:
anything so sweet
should come hard
as bread & water…
      A. R. Ammons,
Tape for the Turn of the Year, 9 Dec:

After a weekend away—D.C.: Titian, Van Dyke, and
friends' new babies—good to be in my own bed again,
aloft, a fearsome height to some men I've been with, a
delight to others, although they must sleep on the edge,
the side with no wall

Out of different times and different mouths:
     —Great to be inside you—some women are too tight,
        others are too loose
     —I had no idea you'd be so athletic
     —I'm afraid I won't satisfy you
     —Get that stuffed animal out of bed!
     —Tycker du inte om att älska?
     —Isn't there always some pain involved?
     —You sleep like a statue
                                                       Stony silence
                                                                Soft silence
        Touch alone

Lately, sleeping with bears, remembering someone I wish
     were here, I think, like an animal, about having a mate
But having just been with infants (all weekend I called
     Margaret's Ania "Little Mammal"), happy moms,
     forbearing dads who looked soft and proud but some-
     how excluded

                           I know it's not a child I want
The man who is not here (yes, another Swede) might do—
     he had the touch
     of someone who loves women

Meanwhile, when unprotected by gay friends, I elude tall
     dark young things who stalk at parties, drinks in hand,
     mouths spilling talk not of making art but the where-
     withal to acquire it: —Too bad I couldn't buy
     Strindberg's sketches two years ago… Circles are
     small, again we meet, eye each other, do not speak

Horny tonight, I entertain the thought:
     Locked up for a week with an attractive beast
     would I screw him, just like that?

                                              Nowadays, probably
not   I want more than that

But sometimes the body succumbs, as it does to illness:

© Copyright 1997 by Rika Lesser
first published in Growing Back: Poems 1972-1992
University of South Carolina Press
Order directly from the press

Rika Lesser is the author of three volumes of poetry, Etruscan Things, All
We Need of Hell, and Growing Back, and the translator of collections
of poems by Hesse, Rilke, Claes Andersson, Gunnar Ekelöf, and Göran Sonnevi.
She teaches poetry or translation at Columbia University, School of the
Arts, the New School University, and the 92nd Street Y. She is currently at
work on a new book of poems.