"Dyserotica" [by Lee Upton]

Dyserotica

There is utopia
and there is dystopia.
There is erotica

and there is....
what you’ve written:
Somehow—

as if what two
at a minimum
people might do

or could do
in another lifetime—
if suddenly shipwrecked, for instance,

or if it was the end of the world
and they alone were left to procreate —
as if your words must be

the antidote to desire,
the corrective trip to the morgue,
the inoculation we haven’t been waiting for...

although even your dyserotica
becomes erotic for some of us:
What else are death bed

confessions for?
Forgive me for not being impressed
by your image of spiders

crawling the mouth of Aphrodite.
I know you don’t love me,
but why do you have to brag about it.

-- Lee Upton

from Undid in the Land of Undone by Lee Upton [New Issues].