Kristine Adams and I discovered this lovely poem together while on a road trip to LA.  We decided it would be a good one to read on the phone to our friends, but couldn’t get a hold of anyone to read it to as it was a Friday night and our friends apparently have lives.  So, here it is, in loving reproduction.

The Wild Cousin of Potpourri

In the lost and found of my heart, I always find you
attractive, in an edge-of-the-cliff sort of way.

Still you speak of getting your lips pumped up
with collagen, as if they’re tires low on air.

When God was doling out spoonfuls of beauty,
you got more than your share. Blessed with an ass

that makes old men yell out Bingo in the supermarket,
calves that leave marathon runners hunched over

and gasping for air, your nipples poking
from your blouse like the tips of an iceberg

that could sink me. I have to confess, my salacious
little Einstein, sometimes when your head’s

turned, I sneak a peek into your ear, hoping
to snag a glimpse of your medulla oblongata.

Let me fondle your hypothalamus until it gets
wet with thirst, skinny dip in your subconscious,

slow dance with the tornado ripping apart
your psyche, wiggle my tongue inside the hole

where the therapist poured the Krazy Glue
to put your mind back together. Show me

where you keep a man’s breath after taking it away.
Do you stuff it under your mattress, or in the lingerie

drawer, like the wild cousin of potpourri? I’m sick
of making lust with homonyms of you. Let me suckle

your cerebellum. I’ll massage your gray matter
till it glows in the dark, perform brainilingus

till you have acid flashbacks. I won’t solve you
and leave you, or brag to the locker room scholars

about how juicy that vein in your forehead gets
when you multiply big numbers. I don’t want you

just for your quadratic equations. I’ll subtract
the square root of your bosom, from the radius

of our embrace, and conjugate your clitoris
into every verb tense known to humankind.

(((!!GAH!!)))