THE PENIS

by Cally Conan-Davies





I don't have one, or rather the one I have

hides discreetly in its little hood. As they should.

A piquant pea, appropriately kept to weather

all kinds of climates hot to chill, with folds

and layers to peel back. And a hook. When laid bare

it won't grow to a tree for all the world to see,

unless of course I'm really a spotted hyena

in which case it would serve a multitude

of purposeful functions: pee, nooky, parturition

(apparently, mine warms to big words though);

and it could be that because it doesn't grow

to industrial proportions, it's easier to ignore it,

easier to relieve it whether anyone is looking or not

and much easier to tell it no, no, no.

Cally Conan-Davies is an Australian writer and teacher who moved to the United States in 2012. Her poems have appeared, and are forthcoming, in Poetry, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Raintown Review, The Sewanee Review and The Southwest Review, among others. She lives mostly in Oregon.

THE CANDIDATE MAKES A PUBLIC STATEMENT ON A PRIVATE MATTER, HIS WIFE AT HIS SIDE

by Michael Cantor





There’s something in the rules, I guess, to make
them brave the scene, dead pale, beside the jerk,
because they all endure it; none will shirk
the role, not one has said, Give me a break,
you asshole, can’t you tell how much I ache –
you’re on your own  – instead, she takes her place
and stands there, shaking,  life drained from her face
as hubby asks the world for time and space.  

There is no way, José, I am forewarned,
you’d ever see me shame myself like that.

I change the channel, give her knee a pat, 

suppress a little joke on women scorned.

I'd like to think she’d stand by me, but still, 

I’ve never run for office, never will.


Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry. A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; and his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, New Verse News, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and numerous other journals and anthologies.  He was also a finalist for the Nemerov (twice), Richard Wilbur and Robert Penn Warren poetry competitions; and has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes.  A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently resides on Plum Island, north of Boston on the Massachusetts coast.

HE LEFT CONGRESS ATWITTER, BUT HE'S BACK

by James Cronin

                       
                            “Mr. Weiner has once again upended popular conceptions
                            about him, vaulting to the front of the race for mayor.”
                                                            --New York Times, July 9, 2013

                              “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”
                                                                                           --Mark Twain

Does foolish scandal have a “use by” date?
Weiner hopes so; he’s on top of a poll,
for mayor. Does victimless sin conflate
with time served to grant a type of parole?

Talking heads, in the past, his sins did bare
and hid their joy.  For hot ratings, Weiner’s
folly was just the stuff they loved to air.
Forget policies, his misdemeanors

were desired: the wry dirt, the sexy tweets,
photos of bare chest and tumescent briefs.
For all the smoke, no fire, no dirty sheets;
it was a mating dance for all its grief,

a bunny hop of humiliation
for the cocksure.  But Twain is not correct.
Like rutting sheep, the rep of the nation
banged his brain blue with no blush to detect.

Recall his nervous, callow demeanor.
When he bared all to the media crush,
remorse only left a sallow Weiner.
Foreplay, not shame, creates the rosy blush.

It can be light, even the slightest touch
can pink the cheeks of an Austen jeune fille
or it can be heavy, even too much,
Yeats’ laid back Leda in feathery glee. 

The risk of exposure will not suffice.
Rumpole’s author knew he had to stick to
the law, but prized sex outdoors for that spice—
cold assets in flagrante delicto.

The need to record is poetic writ.
Anne Carson sings of her little behind,
red with desire, baboon-like, to do it,
finding her soul between bawdy and mind.

Buddha knew pain was rooted in desire,
we want and it hurts, it holds us in thrall,
but we need that rush of blood, that fire.
Unlike the beasts and man before the Fall

we know the grim dance that’s after the ball.

 After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin has returned to his first loves, literary studies and writing.