Some Men
Men who’ve kissed with passion the full lips
of women they didn’t love, men
who’ve grown too reticent for the confessional,
who’ve cleaned public restrooms,
wiped menstrual blood from their walls, who’ve written—
then scrubbed off—vile graffiti from the rusting doors
of shithouse stalls. Men who’ve grown
enormous with disregard, rolls of it bellying over
their wide belts. Men who’ve been barbers
of the dead and were happy for the work,
men who’ve become what they’ve microwaved,
who overvalue the quality of their erections
and fawn over them like the town’s new Wal-Mart.
Men who look awful in suits, who’ve been there
and back yet grew impatient, men who go to wakes
to keep up appearances, who’ve made a deal
with God but can’t remember the terms, men who are old
pros when it comes to hospitals and cracking
jokes at the nurses’ expense, men who’ll be at
your funeral, who’ll kiss your widow with passion
and keep everyone’s lips flapping. Men who’ll move
in and disinfect your bathroom, who’ll trim nose hair
at your sink, conjure mythic hard-ons they’ll purchase
at Wal-Mart. Men who’ll kiss your wife
damned hard on the mouth, take off her dress,
and have your Sunday suit altered and pressed.
From Domestic Garden, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2015
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John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Lives of Water (2003), Anticipate the Coming Reservoir (2008), and Domestic Garden (2015), all with Carnegie Mellon University Press. With Kazim Ali, he has co-edited a volume of essays and interviews on the poetry of Jean Valentine, This-World Company—Jean Valentine (U Michigan P, 2012). For the cultural journal Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, he edits “A Poetry Congeries. He is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at East Carolina University.
