I have a delicious problem. A huge woman is living in my office. It's a quaint office in a purple cottage. I don't know this woman but her presence is an unfair delight. When she speaks her voice causes my body to vibrate. Her woman-smell consumes me. Her breasts push their way out the two windows toward the apple orchard. She's too much -- thighs hips arms hands face feet neck ass, too much. She continues to expand. My desk is crushed, the chairs are inaccessible, the bookshelves are smashed, the walls are cracking. People who come to see me say they can't see her, that she's only in my head. Yet they themselves are unable to enter. This space is full -- full of my own struggle to live. I slide around the edges of her, trying both to live with her and to escape. Soon, movement will be impossible. I can't enter her openings nor leave the office. The pressure is liquid. I wait here, against the wall. This -- this cannot go on. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PICKET-GUARD [NOVEMBER, 1861] by ETHEL LYNN BEERS RAILROAD RHYME by JOHN GODFREY SAXE TO NIGHT by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ON THE UNION AND THREE-FOLD DISTINCTION OF GOD, NATURE AND CREATURE by JOHN BYROM SECOND BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 11 by THOMAS CAMPION PASSAIC FALLS by GEORGE LYNDE CATLIN ALL FOOLS by GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559-1634) BLANK MISGIVINGS OF A CREATURE MOVING ABOUT IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED: 9 by ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH |