Yet Another Pesky Poem About Masturbation
by Jennifer Weathers

Not the mental kind (of course), but

the type one does alone, at night,

an eager act of love when there's no

one else to love, no

other bodies around, and the heat

has been shut off again, the radiator

as cold as you imagine a woman

named Bertha might be, as though a name

indicates a personality, as though a word

can replace an image: like slaughterhouse

is indicative of sausage and the man

with the poleax three feet long who must

swing it like a sledgehammer, three hundred

times a day to the forehead, never missing,

his arm, that aches after the first thirty blows,

the lowing of the herd still in line,

dust sticking to his sweaty head, and horseflies

that linger. Swing and heave and breathe

and his rate of success is 72% most of the time

and amidst this death we forget

that each time we shake

the hand of a stranger, we are closer

to them than we ever thought possible.

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com