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CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATORY MARRIAGE POEMS
by Jeffrey Lee

[none of the person/ages
in this poem, living or dead,
are intended to represent anyone...]

#1

The wife says, "Why don't you write me
romantic poems? You might get laid..."

"I'm writing down realistic poems,
like what you'd actually say."

She's disgusted, "I hope you make
good friends with your hands."

"I'm writing that down!"

"Whatever."


#2

Walking down the street,
I'm massaging her neck,
which she's audibly enjoying
but just as a woman walks by she cracks,
"You're just hoping to get laid."
The woman glances over,
grins and breaks into laughter!

Jeffrey Lee is the winner of the Tupelo Press Literary Fiction Prize for The Autobiography of Somebody Else (forthcoming 2002). His poetry CD, identity papers, available from Drimala Records, features percussionist Toshi Makihara and actress Lori-Nan Engler. The project was funded in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. Under former guises, he has published strangers in a homeland, a poetry chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press. His work has appeared in Crazyhorse, CrossConnect, Many Mountains Moving, Green Mountains Review, Southern Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and other journals. An excerpt of the poem, "the accident of our illusions / let the sky fall far through me," is on the Chinatown Mural, "The Colors of the Light," at 12th and Vine Streets, as part of the the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia.