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      December 7, 2008ReproductionBonnie Bolling

      and at times, the last steps across the bathroom,
      you make a dazzling trail, the petals
      the flower girl scatters under the feet of the bride.
      —Sharon Olds

      The crows on the limb were marauding
      freshly laid eggs from a blue jay
      when I came home from the grocery
      with those white plastic sacks, looped around my wrists.
      Milk was on sale, two dollars per gallon
      disposable diapers and condoms
      bread, bananas and beer. Then
      I remember I forgot to buy tampons.
      I was reaching for them in the hygiene aisle
      when along came Barbara pushing an empty
      shopping cart, slim stunning Barbara
      a perfect size five, a childless woman by choice
      who took charge of a university project
      the focus of which was the male human penis
      and which according to years of serious study
      is apparently shaped like it is for a purpose.
      Consider the curve in the stiff part of the shaft
      and the angular head at the tip, it’s fashioned a bit
      like a scoop or a shovel, not for pleasuring but
      rather to scrape away another man’s sperm
      leaving plenty of room for its own.
      Now I think of his penis, my nakedness, the wine,
      the way he leaned me over the back of the sofa,
      I still feel him kissing the nape of my neck
      the way he left me there damp and moaning,
      staring a hole through my scrambled eggs.
      Finally it dawns on me those tampons
      I failed to remember to buy at the store
      won’t be needed for nine months or more
      and I wish I knew where in the world those
      terrible crows were going; quarrelling, wings flapping
      beaks snapping, irrepressible and laden with life
      flung like buckshot against the goddamned sky.