Erica Jong Poems

I sit in the black leather chair
meditating
on the plume of smoke that rises
in the air,
...

Handcuffed by time,
I travel across this broad
beautiful America-
mesas, deserts,
...

On cold days
it is easy to be reasonable,
to button the mouth against kisses,
dust the breasts
...

For all those who died-
stripped naked, shaved, shorn.

For all those who screamed
in vain to the Great Goddess
...

The lessons we learned here
(fumbling with our lunchbags,
handkerchiefs
& secret cheeks of bubblegum)
...

The whole world is flat
& I am round.
Even women avert their eyes,
& men, embarrassed
...

There is only one story:
he loved her,
then stopped loving her,
while she did not
...

The old poet
with his face full of lines,
with iambs jumping in his hair like fleas,
with all the revisions of his body
...

The women he has had are all faces
without eyes.
He has entered them blind
as a cut worm.
...

This is the dirty laundry poem-
because we have traveled from town to town
accumulating soiled linen & sweaty shirts
& blue-jeans caked & clotted with our juic
...