He is dying
to be a vegetarian, but his wife won't have it.
She slaps a steak, rare, on his plate.
He drools. Eat
she says. You can't fool me.
He desires her, but she won't let him
fuck her, afraid his dick might fall off.
He masturbates with forefinger and thumb.
She uses a vibrator, which one day
he finds in the john, and smells it,
then unzips, and smelling the plastic helps him along.
Everyone in bed but him, he flicks on a zombie movie.
These undead: stupid, bumbling, and their one-note
Brains. They eat brains, but need one, he thinks.
He starts to drool. Ashamed, he checks the fridge
and builds a salad: lettuce, onion, a slice
of eggplant, tomatoes, green pepper.
He can't watch the rest of the flick.
He switches to the weather channel. A blonde
is talking fast and waving her arms as she traces a front,
with high winds which will arrive
at the zombie's town soon.
The way the woman's breasts
hypnotize, the way clouds, wind, lines of latitude,
longitude, and words about barometric pressure
and dew point fall from her lips—it's poetry.
Of course, he unzips, and what the hell,
grabs it with his whole hand.
If it falls off, he won't have this problem
with desire anymore. Or wait. What about
the prostate? He needs info. No
encyclopedia, and the only computer's in his daughter's room.
He'll have to wait. As soon as he stops
worrying, he's staring again at the forecaster—
his private love firing on all pixels,
nothing falling yet,
into it with all his heart.