Joan Gelfand

Sex. Death. And All That Jazz

In one night love was tender it gripped
Time was suspended
And the love was the love of the contented.
Soon after, the firing squad arrived.
Gunned down innocent soldiers.
My heart stopped, it ached, crying out
For the men and all their mothers.

Sex and death are closest relatives; one lives upstairs,
One lives down. The furniture is the same but
     different~
Sex prefers overstuffed chairs in shades of red,
Death digs on black, clean lines, a wooden bed. 

Sex and death share walls, and floors and 
Sometimes when you’re held by love 
You can hear death taking the stairs, one by one by
     one.
It’s a fragile co-existence, this. Sex. Death. 
And all that jazz.

Sex and death, and all that jazz~it’s anything but
     mellow.
It’s about the shakeup, the shakedown, the shaky
     boots and more
It’s about the flip-flop stomach, the flight of bees. 
The shock of the right fellow, the weak knees.

Le petit mort. Or something like that. We tell 
     ourselves
It’s our friend. We never stop to realize that like a
     good story, 
The beginning is in the end. 

_____

Joan Gelfand’s work has been published in such magazines and literary journals as If Women Ruled The World, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, You Are Here: Poetry From the Streets of New York, and Kalliope: Women and War. She currently serves as President of the Women’s National Book Association.