Have You Ever Faked An Orgasm?

Molly Peacock
From:   Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. W.W. Norton / Penguin Canada, 2002.

When you get nervous, it's so hard not to.
When you're expected to come in something
other than your ordinary way, to
take pleasure in the new way, lost, not knowing

how to drive it back to sureness. . . where are
the thousand thousand flowers I always pass,
the violet flannel, then the sharpness?
You can't, you can't . . . extinguish the star

in a burst. It goes on glowing. That head
between your legs so long. Could it really
want to be there? One whimpers as though . . .
then gets mad. One could smash the other's valiant head.

"You didn't come, did you?" Naturally, he knows.
Although I try to lie, the truth escapes me
almost like an orgasm itself. Then the "No"
that should crack a world, but doesn't, slips free.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7

Molly Peacock's works copyright © to the author.