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Nin Andrews is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms and Why They Grow Wings. She is currently working on an entire collection of fuck you poems, and considers each one a sort of valentine to the world.
Where Memory Ends
Because I slept in the palms of your hands for years,
because mothers and fathers are whispering and touching the soft
skin of the children we never had,
because I hear the hollow clip of your footsteps following me
down unlit streets,
because you’re falling behind, becoming smaller, fainter,
because I keep biting my lips until they bleed,
because I dream of sunlight falling on my long, black hair, and
you, rearranging my hair over my breasts and shoulders,
because you stepped off the balcony into the photograph of a sky
as blue as the hotel swimming pool, and as small,
because the cicadas kept cheeching, and it’s too fucking hot to
sleep,
because your lies were as beautiful as an ocean ceiling on calm
mornings in Blue Hill, Maine, and I wanted every one
of them, because your lies were as beautiful as an ocean
ceiling on calm mornings in Blue Hill, Maine, and I wanted
them all.
because trapped in each of us is a muted scream,
because a stranger calls me, and asks if he can take me out, and
I wear nothing beneath my rumpled skirt,
because I tell him all about you, how I was twenty eight to
your forty five, how you loved it that way, showing me what
to wear, eat, drink, and I drank it, every last sip, wiping
the grease on my sleeves
because I send him seven pairs of silk boxers, each embroidered
with my phone number,
because he calls every night, and he sends me
camisoles, chocolates, and a long list of your gifts (the
ones you never sent): strands of pearls, diamonds, tickets
on the Concorde to Madrid, Venice
because I go everywhere. Anywhere he wants.
because I tell him I love him. I miss him, I do.
because I bear his child, a son who looks just like you,
because I will send you a photo of our infant in a wicker basket
with a note that reads, Here’s our son. And you
recognize your tiny self, always needing to be picked up,
arms reaching like antennae, wanting, always wanting,
because I want to. I want to. Fuck you.
Mrs. Bluebeard
The world, have you noticed, offers such few visions. That’s why I became such an angel, a once in a lifetime thing. I know what you think. How could I? I should have spared others the agony—all of your card-playing, drunken friends. But, in your absence, they came in droves, each one wanting their little flings. They had no fears and knew nothing of my little eccentricity. Of course, they meant nothing to me. They were mere dress rehearsals. For entertainment I reduced them to clouds of dust in the mornings glare. It was soothing, really. To savor the taste of their last breaths and wishes, to survey their absences like small clouds, gathering on the horizon.
You see how I’ve changed? I now look forward to endings like summer rain, as if they were blessings and my only relief. Such powers I have gained, my Love. I will no longer disappoint you. I now know what can never change. What troubles our existence. How sometimes only a lie can save you. From the sky overhead, even the meteors are falling as helplessly as rain. It is only a matter of time before you sleep with me again. Remember how once you begged me . . .
That was then.
Now, I can already see you fingering my tiniest key.
Go ahead. Fuck me. If you still can.
Advice about Pussy Poems
Please be advised. You should not write pussy poems. Ever. They are cliché. Even if they have not been done like love and loss poems. That’s why, when you wrote in your love poem, That night the pussy was floating above me on pink wings, I whited her out. You seem to have mistaken the pussy for an angel. Something she can never be. Good thing. Imagine what would happen if pussies become as popular as angels? You’d see them everywhere, embossed and glowing—on greeting cards, Christmas trees, book jackets, mantelpieces---people would pray to them for luck or mercy. Pussies would filter into our language so quickly every poet would write at least one pussy poem. Allen Ginsberg said that whoever controls the language, controls the race. Pussies should not be given control! Nothing short of disaster would follow. Pussies would determine the path of the thunderbolts and make the gullies for the rain. Pussies would strip the world of its worldliness. In hands such as yours pussies might even lose their pussiness. There would be no past or tomorrow. Alas. But of course, you need not worry. Why? Because most don’t know what a pussy is. Like you, my dear. Some imagine she flies, when in fact the pussy sucks men out of the air, one at a time. No one notices the missing, and the missing notice no one. Take your best friend, Joe, for example. He’s been gone for weeks. Have you noticed? How he’s at peace forever, like a bee in clover. Like a tree frog in a soft July rain. And the pussy, too, now that she’s found Joe. Now that there are as many hours in her days as eggs in a supermarket. Not even a poet can say how she feels inside.