LOUDSPEAKER:: Poetry by Ken Anderson

Writing

Aug 17

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WUSSY is proud to present poetry by Ken Anderson.
If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.

THE QUIET, SENSITIVE TYPE

You said
you were looking
for the quiet, sensitive type, then squandered months
on me, who
on a cup
of joe
could rap
for days
and who, cut off, could curse you
with the savagery
of love.

I, too, pursue him
through the noisy crowd
in a smoky bar— the ambiguous ideal, the pose.

Night
after night, he mills
among the men, his pensive silence matched only
by the beauty
of his face, the promise
of his lips, the nimbus
of his hair. And he carries his polished image
like a bust.

In bed, he indulges his simple desires,
yet proves receptive
to a new suggestion, yielding
without a word, watching
without a smile, coming
with a very candid groan.

—

FRUIT

We eat
to live
and live
to eat
or both. A necessary luxury avenges the bland—
to peel a big banana slowly, nibble foreskin,
swallow whole, to bounce a pair
of plump plums
on your chin
or tongue a glistening cherry
till it begs. A just “dessert”
requires some kumquat smeared
on your lips.

—

Ken Anderson’s novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. An operatic version premiered June 16, 2009, at the First Existentialist Congregation in Atlanta. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award.

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