Flunking Biology

Flunking Biology
Ed McManis

An octopus has 3 hearts
and no one to love.
Math is complicated
underwater, relationships
too.

I read that a pig’s
orgasm can last
up to thirty
minutes.

I knew a girl in college
biology who flunked
poetry, hollowed out a
cricket’s eye, thought the
smoothed, empty white
orbit was beautiful.

She had multiple
orgasms according to her
roommate, but not
with me.
It took me two weeks
to break up with her.

She dumped me in the library.
I used to keep my love
letters in a shoe box,
then I got married.


Twenty-five years later,
my son asks advice on
how to propose.

I think how vows require
a long memory, a stainless steel
heart, how youth affords

the ability to duck and forget,
how fidelity roots you
to all those blossoms.

I’m at an age
where I love bacon
sometimes
more than sex, and
trivia gives me more
comfort than truth.

I think of how a queen bee
uses her stinger only to sting
another queen.

I don’t bother to tell him
the odds drones have
working the garden,
petal to petal, pistil to weed.

I give him my blessing,
split my heart.

Comments are closed.