Karyna McGlynn
The Rainforest Is for Dicks
There is nothing capitulating about it.
It is for salt-of-the-earth barbaric yawpers.
& followers of Robert Bly.
If you menstruate in the rainforest,
it’s a big deal.
They’ll drag you from camp
& set you on top of something
that’ll sting the devil out of you.
Not a fire-ant heap. That’s just a myth.
But possibly a strawberry poison-dart frog.
They have quite a bit of caché right now and,
like women, make relatively harmless pets
when born in captivity. Nobody’s sure why,
but we think it has something to do
with depriving these slippery things
of the food in their natural habitats.
In the woman’s case,
that’s feta cheese & Yoplait.
But anyway,
the rainforest is for those
with the wherewithal to rent an S.U.V.,
make trail-mix & invent pot lingo, like:
“I have to see a man about a duck,” or
“Let’s fry up some grasshoppers & get geeky.”
This sort of talk is extremely useful in the rainforest.
Here’s the thing: there’s already enough rain
(in the rainforest) without dragging a bleary-eyed
woman & her mascara wand into the picture.
She might confuse the wildlife.
Her private parts might be mistaken
for a rare brazil-nut in the night.
Like, suppose a bunch of guys
wanted to run naked through the rainforest.
With a woman in their midst, things would get weird.
You see, the rainforest is for ungroomed hair
& bare chests
& bracing aftershave.
The rainforest is for people who can pack
everything they own into a backpack
in under a minute.
The rainforest is for people with brown hiking sandals.
It is for dilettantes, poetasters,
& amateur photographers with Canon Rebels.
It is for students of Evergreen State College
& it is for people with camp-stoves & beer money
but it is definitely not for pussies.
Your Cock & Us
I was afraid of cocks, but
not of yours, you
were never a fireman, you
were more like a librarian, no,
not mousy, but
it was up to me to check-out
your cock, it wasn’t
going to come flying out at me
with a little red hat:
I was sixteen/it wasn’t sex.
I was your textbook.
I was your live-nude-girl.
I was your World Book Encyclopedia
Color-by-number vagina.
And we were Ganja & Petty
Ganja & Petty
I wore easy access
dresses like jungles
We were Ganja & Petty
Ganja & Petty
& screw-top red wine
& stolen pistachios
& the red, all
the red, all
important lies on our lips:
Perfecting the art of
Peripheral foreplay
Parallel tongues & toes
Tugging & Pulling
Tugging & Pulling
I got tired.
I got tired. I had
little hands, couldn’t
do anymore, and I
slept in our nights, in the
same dark sheets, summer to fall:
we were filling the empty
gaping mouth of Mad-Dog
with whizzing suburban rage, empty
great Hills’ mailbox with glass and pumpkin, empty
green-teethed cul-de-sac with fire, empty
golf course with Marley, empty:
delusion & dream & drunk,
your dick, a knick-knack, it was
Ganja & Petty
Ganja & Petty
it was
home,
little cock,
I was sixteen & I
have never felt more married.