Sex With My First Husband By Jane Rosenberg LaForge

The notion that courage exists
at the bottom of a bottle
is tested each time
he puts his hand in
a clogged sink:
a cloud of glass and water
like something I once made
as a child forms a thesis—
whiskey and a match in a solid state
via ice cube tray, as though the potential
for danger could be held in abeyance
by setting and temperature,
forever captured.

He said, without solicitation,
that I was closed,
shut down, not open
for business: unable
to catch fire but frigid
and contrary like sand that churns
yet refuses to coalesce into cement,
his sex unable to break the surface
tension spreading like a personal
denunciation of his manhood
and then he said I must have been
just another lesbian
like all the other women
in my family.

He spoke not through enamel
and muscle but a raw
hole, a spout, his native
teeth knocked out by impact
and his tongue undisciplined,
a former actor with a forged voice
perhaps suited for television commercials;

his body long and battered
by scars and intentional
accidents, rendering him
useless for nude scenes
he yearned to star in.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, including MY AUNT'S ABORTION (BlazeVOX [books] 2023). She also has published four chapbooks of poetry, a memoir, and two novels. Her most recent novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS (New Meridian Arts Press 2021), was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards for regional fiction (west). She lives in New York and reviews books for AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW.