DIRTY DANCING
masculinity is perpetually shirtless.
otherwise wears a leather jacket,
black pants. he towers over naive
femininity & mature femininity,
respectively. I am not sure who
to identify with. Certainly I better resemble
naive femininity, with her curly hair,
pale eyes pried open wide. Anyway,
I have never been pregnant, or poor,
or blonde, but I have sat on many
couches with mascara on
my face like an oil spill & I
have screamed at someone who knows
nothing, that they know nothing.
naive femininity leans back against the wall.
it isn’t her fault. purity is repulsive once
you’re the girl on the couch. it’s a corpse
in a sundress, but she looks at
her with pity. we know that
naive femininity is a dead thing
already. masculinity has no idea.
he thinks the movie’s about him.
LUCRETIA II
Comforting to think someone else
might have the words for it – mother,
doctor, lover. The fact of loss.
The fact of hunger. The process by which
the body becomes meat. Bent in half &
backwards. The desire to be desired, which
in turn devours desire. I left my tongue
in your hotel room, but when I went
back everything was clean
& gone. Some part of me still caught
between your yellow teeth. I wasn’t ready.
The idea of sorrow. The concept of blank.
Nicola Maye Goldberg lives in a haunted house in upstate New York. Her work has appeared in Hanging Loose, Sadie Magazine, Forth Magazine, and elsewhere.
