Internet Dating

by Leanne Averbach

 

You can't imagine, all the street men

Or subway.  Men in bars or diners, men

In the market, market brokers, broken

Yet handsome men, cocky escalating

Elevator men with scents.  All

Face the razor

Crop of my decapitating

Gaze; have I not seen them

As I am - severed like a

Marie Antoinette

On some electronic page?

 

On sightings

I cut away their bodies and

Examine each face avoiding

The blood, the waste, or worse-

Bad taste: descending

Leathered men wanting nothing

More than to pull themselves

From their sheaths, or men

On leashes.

 

Only dogs

Sway me from my tyranny

For I am an animal

Lover.  But men in lines

May as well be mug

Shots, the authorities and I having read

Their implausible self-descriptors.  Men

Who are comfortable

In jeans or tuxes or sunsets

Are most endangered, their vast

Numbers no sure thing.