There on the forbidden rack in uncle’s room, they cavorted, tits and ass, in issues of Zap! a pen and ink Kamasutra. You ate it up, all the while listening for grandma’s vacuum on the stairs. This is what men and women got up to behind closed doors. This explained the noises and the fug of Saturdays. You studied as if for a quiz, to be ready when called upon, while eying your unripe body with suspicion. Eew! What wouldn’t you give to have shucked your virginity, an operative already successfully embedded behind enemy lines. Did everyone march towards sex as if to punishment, or was this your hex?
Juice
You never used to drink. Spirits tasted foul to you. A stint teaching kids started your reaching for the bottle, a way to release the breath held from first to last bell, a stealthy restoration of autonomy. Or perhaps marriage twisted the corkscrew, a pinot to say just let it go, you needn’t always be right— or a little Islay to bleed venom from a fight. Of course, three teens would be enough, a shot for each when things got rough. Then again, why seek excuse for what has long served poets as a muse. The Dionysian, as you learned in graduate school, unbinds us from Apollonian rules.
Devon Balwit’s poems can be found in Under a Warm Green Linden, as well as in The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long form issue), Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Poetry South, and Grist among others. For more, see her website.
