A more complete human being is a human being who is more completely bestial.
— Nietzsche
They go at it in the back seat of our car, then on into the restaurant, and later out on the sidewalk, their snatching hands all over each other so we will see the heat flashing between them like the neon in a splashy marquee above a theater they would have us enter a blunted old married couple, the wistful audience before their flickering screen. What they would never think is how we are thinking just now of monkey island at the zoo, the meticulous chimps fingering one another’s pelts, browsing for fleas, the lone baboon masturbating to beat the band. And still at it when we say our tactful goodnights, what they would never think is how we will unlock the doors of our own modest house and with you hard behind me, your hands clasping my swaying hips, feel our way, breathless through the jungle dark.
This poem is excerpted from the anthology Passionate Hearts, edited by Wendy Maltz. © 1996 by Wendy Maltz. It appears here with permission of New World Library, Novato, California.
— Ed.
