Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer

Portrait of Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert 1925–2012

I'd walk her home after work buying roses and talking of Bechsteins. She was full of soul. Her small room was gorged with heat and there were no windows. She'd take off everything but her pants and take the pins from her hair throwing them on the floor with a great noise. Like Crete. We wouldn't make love. She'd get on the bed with those nipples and we'd lie sweating and talking of my best friend. They were in love. When I got quiet she'd put on usually Debussy and leaning down to the small ribs bite me. Hard.

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Rick Penkwitz132 words
  1. Jaclyn United States

    This poem made me actually feel. I felt that you were speaking to a women that was Beautiful and it was calm. and Warm. I actually never felt feeling before, when reading a poem.

  2. Rick Penkwitz United States

    This is about what the protagonist does not do or think. We will not enter his mind as he himself refuses to do. This girl is what men refer to as a **** tease because she knows he is terribly attracted but is too self effacing to dream he has a chance. This is why the wise female knows what she can get away with and why and how she bites. The word Hard is a fragment all by itself...because he was in terms of…

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    This is about what the protagonist does not do or think. We will not enter his mind as he himself refuses to do. This girl is what men refer to as a **** tease because she knows he is terribly attracted but is too self effacing to dream he has a chance. This is why the wise female knows what she can get away with and why and how she bites. The word Hard is a fragment all by itself...because he was in terms of paralysis and excitement--as she was, in reference to her nipples; something excited her! She exalted in this and the whole experience was like coperating in one's own castration. Surely we've all experienced this 'being played'or playing. It's the pear thinking how delicious the toothless fruit fly is.

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