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featured poet, Angela Kirby

Jardi d’Eros, Barcelona

At the exhibition of erotic art
I see more than I expected,
take penises, for instance,
how, en masse,
they lose most of their appeal,
their potency
and that veiled threat
even the best of them offer
and how instead
they become innocent,
mild and sweet
as mushrooms in a field
or like pallid sea-anemones
swaying gently to and fro
whereas female pudenda,
usually so docile,
so inviting
with their pretty ways
and sleek little curls –
they take courage in a crowd,
gang up and, if pushed,
turn nasty, snapping
at the men who peer too closely,
making them tremble.
 

Angela Kirby

first published in Ambit, Spring 2003 and in collection Mr Irresistible, Shoestring Press, 2005

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