Suffering the Cut

Methods vary. The least private part of the story

Gelded the lily with a clean slice, and awarded

Survivors a silver quill to sluice the watered

Wine drunk to toast their power and gory

Privilege as chamberlains of harem or court.

With rubber and gum, toe or tongue or fibula

They improvised les plaisirs de la petite oie,

Though Chinese lords strapped striplings, like swords,

On their haunches to enter the Dragon Queen's cave.

The vengeance on Abelard, the advantage for Sporus

Merely reverse the motive to neuter, and spare us

For those ecstasies that sanction the closest shaves-

In line with less-is-more-from the bacchants of Attis

To the Sistine choir. They burned the "Holy Seal"

(Its bunch of tissue creased like a girasol)

To stanch the lambent blood of Russian fanatics.

Our modern knives should be so sharply mythical.

But science has simplified it all to a complex,

Or outpatient operation, adding a third sex

To sap the fruitless flowers of love's statistical

Columns. Besides, what positions are we cut out for

Today? Scarlatti arias? A Scene in Kimono?

NAPPING FARMBOY BITTEN BY HOG... ? No,

Today we cut our losses and come, by artful

Dodges, merely to please those whom now we

Regard without passion. We leave ourselves intact,

In touch with gestures of flesh that only connect

Loose ends of libido: the lies that bind. Clowning

J. D. MC CLATCHY

Blows of a familiar fate, we opt for this afterlife

To be whole again beyond confusion's waste

Of claims. Without counting love's labor's cost,

We shrug it off as just this slice of life:

Take pains to give pleasure. Remember yourself

As a method to trick fictions from the point you make

Of being one on whom nothing is lost, for whose sake

There is little left to lose, and so much to retell.