Tuesday poem #184 : Marie Buck : I Cough Into Your Face and You Cough into Mine

I was practicing suspending a coin in midair,
a coin the size of a standard desk globe
and the weight of a very heavy thing.

And now I remember something already ghoulish,
my majestic pink belly glowing in the dark.

The belly button ought to be sexy but isn’t;
it’s sexy to the one who licks it but feels
like nothing to the one who’s licked,
so that both parties will eventually decide
to end the awkwardness of trading pleasure
and sit back and instead read the script
on the decorative
napkins they’ve been given.

The script that says “the world is not terrible,
it’s pretty awesome,”

which no one believes,
which kills all desire.

Marie Buck is the author of Life & Style (Patrick Lovelace Editions) and Portrait of Doom (Krupskaya). She lives in Brooklyn.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan