The Poem as Celebrity

When I wrote about the time she was on my top

Ten list, I was a boy. (She was yet unborn.) I was on a smart aleck.

When I wrote about her in my diary, that she was

My sister-in-law’s best friend at Harvard, it was the truth.

There is no lust here: there is no mountain under the snow

Of her blouse which I would like to climb, unshod.

There is only myself touching my other self

In a dream. It’s a dream I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t

Bereave were it never gone.

No more Natalie! No more ports! No more man!

Now for a good time, I can only pretend to write

The sentence from which neither of us will escape.

Capital Punishment Poem #78

Writing it, he said, was like trying to pry

Open a padlock with a felt-tip pen.

Presidential Poem  

When I consider how my daytime

God is spent, everything is

Coyly charged: dish soap

Next to clipped fingernails,

Old vibrator beside a bag

Of pretzels, the paint of my keyed

Limousine, flecking into

The strobe lights of a police car.

When I visit the National Museum of Art,

Every boy who eyes a Balthus

Painting is orphaned to me.

But not in a Third World way.

Death threats may be flattering;

However, I’m learning to detest whining—

Life, life, I hate to leave—

Particularly after a close shave, after sex,

After signing off on a sob…

A bombardiering…

Yes, yes—

But Madam President,

You just stare at the lamb.

Don’t you like it?

Mark Yakich’s next collection of poems, The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine, will be published by Penguin in 2008.  His website is markyakich.com.