A Poem by Jameson Fitzpatrick

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Threesome with Ambivalence

Bridges are beautiful
but is there no such thing as bending too far,
taut between wish and command?

To make room in the bed then,
slow evacuation of the self: who was I before I
was yours? what did I want

more than anything? Smoke
in the afternoon, clothes strewn across the floor,
why shouldn’t love be like this?

If it hurts, if it feels good
(blur of brushstroke down my spine, that artful)
 — don’t I touch him in kind?

Your old lover’s husband
in from California for the weekend, to want him
between us but to want nothing

between us. Not but but and,
taking him into our mouths in turn, while down in D.C.
the Supreme Court hears arguments

for and against marriage.
I, too, have two opinions: oh yes God yes fuck yes
and the one that dissents: Stop

worshipping his nipples already;
you shall have no other God before me. But before me
your life stretches back a steady succession

of orgies, freedom lived out — 
shouldn’t I follow sometimes, off the path
and into the woods or fray or baths?

I do. I choose you,
which is to choose him and the others and to say
Everything I was ever told of love

was so simple as to be untrue.
Let me see for myself what you desire beside me.
Let me look it in the face and kiss him.

Jameson Fitzpatrick teaches at NYU and is at work on his first manuscript.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.