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      July 30, 2015But How Can You Name What You Don’t HaveMichele Lent Hirsch

      The man on the train with the
      casual boner is reading The Beautiful and
      the Damned. He reminds me I’ve never read
      that particular book and I’ve also never had
       
      a boner. What’s more important: to read every
      novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald or to feel
      what this man feels daily, nonchalantly,
      this everyday taken-for-granted erection
       
      beneath Adidas exercise pants?
      To feel it just once, as a woman, a woman
      who isn’t saying that her body is
      the wrong one but who’s always, I mean
       
      always, needed to test that out
      herself. Not the Adidas
      pants. Just the erection. Not for
      sport, but to be certain.
       
      The man sees me glancing at
      the spot where he juts out. He
      probably mistakes the way that
      I want it.

      from #48 - Summer 2015

      Michele Lent Hirsch

      “That I grew up without a car, without that bubble of privacy, probably informs my work. The subway, for one, sneaks into my poems—but it’s more than that. It’s how I don’t mind being squished against strangers, all of us observing each other, all smelling each other while pressed close. That, and there’s a certain cadence. I was bombarded by family members’ strong accents—some from the Bronx, others from Manhattan and Brooklyn—and my writing must’ve absorbed all those lilts.”