Erica Jong Poems

Nobody believes in love-
not even me.

Love is the thing
you wait
...

A delicate border. A nonexistent country.
The train obligingly dissolves in smoke.
The G.I. next to me is talking war.
I don't 'know the Asian mind,' he says.
...

Could I unthink you,
little heart,
what would I do?
throw you out
...

These beautifully grown men. These hungerers.
Look at them looking!
They're overdrawn on all accounts but hope
& they've missed
...

We sit on a rock
to allow our souls
to catch up with us.
...

You can be hurt
because you want too much;
because in your face it says:
love me, nurture me;
...

You whom I hoped to reach by writing,
you beyond the multicolored tangle
of telephone wires,
you with your white paper soul
...

Goddess, I come to you
my neck wreathed with rosebuds,
my head filled with visions of infants,
...

Sweet muse
with bitter milk,
I have lain
between your breasts,
...

A bed, a telephone, the cord
to the world
beyond the womb . . .
Here lovers meet, have met,
...