Becoming A Nun

For Jennifer Josephy On cold days it is easy to be reasonable, to button the mouth against kisses, dust the breasts with talcum powder & forget the red pulp meat of the heart. On those days it beats like a digital clock- not a beat at all but a steady whirring chilly as green neon, luminous as numerals in the dark, cool as electricity. & I think: I can live without it all- love with its blood pump, sex with its messy hungers, men with their peacock strutting, their silly sexual baggage, their wet tongues in my ear & their words like little sugar suckers with sour centers. On such days I am zipped in my body suit, I am wearing seven league red suede boots, I am marching over the cobblestones as if they were the heads of men, & I am happy as a seven-year-old virgin holding Daddy's hand. Don't touch. Don't try to tempt me with your ripe persimmons. Don't threaten me with your volcano. The sky is clearer when I'm not in heat, & the poems are colder.