WHY SO MANY PENISES (OR SHOULD I SAY PEE-NI?)
Dicks drawn in cement on the still-wet tar.
Dicks drawn in the snow on the hood of my car.
Dicks drawn on lockers, dicks decking the hall!
Dicks watching me pee in the bar bathroom stall.
The boys made a habit of drawing dicks—
big dicks, little dicks, flirting dicks, squirting dicks,
limp ones, erect ones, shy ones, direct ones,
bald dicks, hairy dicks, friendly dicks, scary dicks,
fat dicks, lean dicks, nice dicks, mean dicks.
Dicks in their notebooks, dicks on the desks,
dicks in Emily Dickinson—obscuring the text!
Dicks in Great Gatsby and A Tale of Two Cities.
So many dicks and so little titties.
I never understood drawing dicks in the void—
is it a marking of territory? Someone call Freud.
I never drew a vagina in my loose leaf
(I know what you’re thinking, Georgia O’Keefe).
It’s kind of ridiculous, I don’t mean to sound callous,
but I can’t ride a train without seeing a phallus.
The schools say the girls’ skirts must reach their knees—
no v-necks, no spaghetti straps, in 100 degrees,
because too much skin might inhibit education
but no one thinks twice about dick decoration.
Dicks with tongues, dicks with eyes,
a dick with wings who soars and flies!
Dicks in the shape of a unicorn,
where the body’s a dick, and so is the horn!
Dicks where the semen is a telephone cord,
dicks in a boxing ring, or two fighting swords.
A long-necked dick, with the head of a giraffe,
the dick, in a way, has become autograph,
the author’s been signing his name all along:
Here’s my John Hancock, I’m a big fucking dong!
I guess maybe the point is to prove masculinity?
To say, I can throw a baseball, I lost my virginity!
Look at my dick, it’s so big I don’t cry!
That’s not a tear, that’s Super Cum near my eye.
I’m a man! I’m a man! Look at the evidence.
I drew a dick on a podium, my dick could be president!
But I’ll take the dick hot dog with the testicle buns,
because it’s art, in the end, and it’s better than guns.
—from Poets Respond
March 6, 2018
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Megan Falley: “This poem explores the relationship between toxic masculinity, the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, all subsequent gunman threats, and the seemingly benign drawing of dicks in high schools.” (web)
