Cons
Don’t con a conwoman, Euridice lipped.
The gig she hired Orpheus for was cushy,
touch of sweat, some nights.
Liar and lyre, she thought.
Euri was into bad boys long after her
Retired Underground Groupie pin arrived.
She was paying the big O a stud fee,
though there was no shtupping involved.
Just singing. He could belt a lyric.
If eagles boomed like Pavarotti,
that would be him. His footing sure
as any mountaineer. And his hair
made Euridice want to tumble backward
into hell, never mind the eons
it had taken hand-over-hand to get out.
She wanted to scale him
but that could happen only
in measured sighs.
What could she offer him
besides overtime?
Eternity is in love with the
productions of time and honey,
he was a show-stopper.
Encore! She plunged again and again,
like her skin.
If she had trapped him in her
he was agile enough to scale
out, leaving her
rock bottom,
her bottom no rock,
sagging in her capris,
in an downturned
economy, her only skill
an ancient come-hither look
that used to make cocks cry
& point like weathervanes.
Hooking Up
Swifts do it in air, Lou says,
& sometimes they forget to unhook.
They crash! The more reason
to do it quickly, Sweetheart.
Sometimes they forget to unclasp.
It’s happened to all of us.
Quick! Sweetheart, lest we hit earth.
Isn’t this reason enough to hook up?
It’s happened to all of us. Crash!
We hardly learn, no matter
how many little deaths. Reason enough
to hook up, Sweetie--quick!
Slow loves crash. More reason
to hit it in flight, Lou says.
Bio: Marilyn Kallet is the author of 14 books, including, Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, Black Widow Press, 2009. She holds a Lindsay Young Professorship at the University of Tennessee, where she directed the creative writing program for 17 years. She teaches poetry workshops in Auvillar, France, for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.