Lust Money

That slick monster sat down with us all.
A man wants to know mouth-first

           what my face does looking at him,
           if my eyes are cogitating wells

of sweet soup. He imagines me forward
then bent as in over. The idea is I’ll say yes, 

          go to the car for unbuttoning
          but a wife flashed back in the way.

So I don’t visit the details of convention.
When I say I like a man who knows

           what he wants, there’s nothing more
           about him to like. Nowhere else to be,

I stand under the snow face-
first, the mouth my summoning shrine.

Copyright © 2019 by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 18, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.