DIRTY DANCING

masculinity is perpetually shirtless.

otherwise wears a leather jacket,

black pants. he towers over naive

femininity & mature femininity,

respectively. I am not sure who

to identify with. Certainly I better resemble

naive femininity, with her curly hair,

pale eyes pried open wide. Anyway,

I have never been pregnant, or poor,

or blonde, but I have sat on many

couches with mascara on

my face like an oil spill & I

have screamed at someone who knows

nothing, that they know nothing.

naive femininity leans back against the wall.

it isn’t her fault. purity is repulsive once

you’re the girl on the couch. it’s a corpse

in a sundress, but she looks at

her with pity. we know that

naive femininity is a dead thing

already. masculinity has no idea.

he thinks the movie’s about him.



LUCRETIA II



Comforting to think someone else

might have the words for it – mother,

doctor, lover. The fact of loss.

The fact of hunger. The process by which

the body becomes meat. Bent in half &

backwards. The desire to be desired, which

in turn devours desire. I left my tongue

in your hotel room, but when I went

back everything was clean

& gone. Some part of me still caught

between your yellow teeth. I wasn’t ready.

The idea of sorrow. The concept of blank.



Nicola Maye Goldberg lives in a haunted house in upstate New York. Her work has appeared in Hanging Loose, Sadie Magazine, Forth Magazine, and elsewhere.