Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #6, January, 1999 : -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6  7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13
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Julia Goldberg

                 

The Boys I Mean

(a response to e.e. cummings)

The boys I mean are too refined
They get their way with just a smile
They never twitch or fall apart
They like to make you wait a while.

The boys I mean have
charcoal eyes and long-lashed glances as they watch.
Their frayed black coats graze scuffed-up shoes
Their tar-burned tongues tell only lies.

The boys I love have silly pasts
that stay away like beaten wives
Their alphabets are M and E
They mix their drinks with hunting knives.

The girls they love look just like me
and wear barbed tongues like cellophane
They smoke whatever comes their way
They fuck with pleasure and for pain.

The boys I mean have too much grace
and too much money, luck and brains.
They crash their cars with little haste
They like to park in fire lanes.

The boys I mean can talk all night
and even then they still don't care
They pose and posture, preen and pout.
They always have such pretty hair.

The boys I love will break your heart
with granite fists and brooding stares.
They'll fuck you anywhere you want
in alleys, cars or hallway stairs.

They say whatever's on your mind
They cannot, will not, do not dance
The boys I mean are too refined
They shake your world with just a glance.


"The Boys I Mean ( a response to e.e. cummings)" originally appeared in Conceptions Southwest, Spring, 1994, and in the anthology 1997 anthology from Storyline Press, The Muse Strikes Back.

Copyright © 1999 Julia Goldberg.

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Issue #6, January, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.