The Sex Life Of A Writer

by Maeve McKenna

A while back, if I remember right, my life was a need
I punctuated. Then I read about poetic truth
and failed as a human. I was a writer. Every hour of ink
scrawled on my skin I scratched into scab,

flicked from the mattress pus–tired flakes —
an image I could never settle in, yet wallowed
in words without effort. You came close
to understanding yearning, once clutching

my graphite fist as it scribbled tongues between my groin.
It was lust, I wrote, mostly for effect. I believed
in the writing of nasty love,
and our role in it, mainly to get noticed.

I lied then, and also when I wrote of the moon settling
within your eyes as we made love against the stump
of a tree. I said you howled. You did make sounds,
but it was more whimpers. An owl hooting somewhere

in the distance grew silent in the last verse
and I missed the chance to say it was laughing at us.
Yes, it’s true we did have sex, but
who would believe it now; longing as dead

as our first pet, un–mourned as rhyme on paper.
So, I am forging words; it seems more truthful
than composing, inhaling to snatch a whiff
of the first draft of another learned sigh, crouched on knees

frantically scanning guidelines, the serrated blade
of refusal lurking close to my heart, my pinched
mouth circling a sweaty crotch where it might find submission,
or muster a smile as a thank you for the fuck.