Three Poems by Mary Meriam: Intersection, What will I do?, The Boston Soak

Intersection

Judith and Olga
kiss at the red
light two lips touch

mommy grunts
tut-tut two lips
twisted wreckage

sixties spring
the flash of red tulips
signals go

so I go
leap from no
into knowing

What will I do?

The answer is a room.
There is a bed.

The bed is there for me to lie on.
I go there

yellow leaves already falling
for the sake of lust

though I must
imagine

"you"
my body creaks closes opens moans moves

as it has
other afternoons.

The Boston Soak

She shovels the snow from her drive
then takes her Sunday bath.
What does she know that I don't know?
she wonders in her long soaking bath.
She does make me laugh.
How far would I have to drive?
She splashes and slides in her bath
forgetting what she knows or doesn't know.
Her own skin belongs to her
and hot bubbles, there is no drive,
it's only love, and love is like water
unencumbered by "he" or "she."
One last slosh of soaked loofah,
and she steps out of the bath.
Down the drain goes the water,
where it ends, she doesn't know.
Perhaps in the snow on her drive.

Copyright 2009, Mary Meriam. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.

Mary Meriam’s poems and essays are published or forthcoming in Literary Imagination, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Windy City Times, Rattle, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, Sixty-Six: A Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Light Quarterly, among others Her sonnet about waltzing with Julie Andrews was a finalist in A Prairie Home Companion’s Bed of Roses Love Sonnet Contest and read on NPR. Her chapbook, The Countess of Flatbroke (afterword by Lillian Faderman), was published by Modern Metrics and received an award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Another chapbook, The Poet's Zodiac, was a finalist in the 2009 Robin Becker chapbook contest at Seven Kitchens Press. She has an MFA from Columbia University.