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< back GERRY MURPHY

AND SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL AND SHE WAS

FEROCIOUSLY INTELLIGENT

after August
Kleinzahler

And I thought
this is where I tell her –
she was on top writhing away
doing that shimmy only she can do
and coming in fits and spurts and starts
now panting now drooling now leaking now
grunting
now yelping now farting now belching now
speaking in tongues
happily unburdening herself in a fluid litany
of profanities covering the entire patriarchal
spectrum
from oppression through objectification to
condescension
while I had already lost all purchase
on this level and begun operating tentatively
on the next one up – you know that Tantric
stuff –
and I was about to say
IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou
alltogetherjustlikethat –
it had been two months since we’d seen each
other
and we were going at it hammer and tongs
in her old bed (not the Spartan cot her mother
assigned me with her don’t-even-think-of-it
look)
it’s not as if I was ever reluctant
to spew that perilous incantation
and the flowers fucking wandering fucking
lonely
fucking cloudy fucking floating fucking flowers
–
so I thought if you say it now she might
remember it
when she is being interviewed in her dotage

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Poetry International Web - AND SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL AND SH... http://ireland.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/in...

on Where is he now and Who was he anyway?

and it was Christmas I mean jingle bells just
unleash
those three tinsled words they will land
upright,
well-dressed, house-trained and plausible
on the welcoming porch of her ear
and finally convince her of your undying
devotion
but no...

© 2006, Gerry Murphy

From: End of Part One – New & Selected
Poems
Publisher: Dedalus, Dublin, 2006
ISBN: 9781904556612

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