She Is Not Mine Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The dog walked down the street
Where her eyes were languid above him,
Suckling child-
And I cried, my eyes really moped,
Because the child was not mine,
And even more beautiful because the child was
Not mine;
Of needing lips not mine;
And I watched her leave for buses home-
And they were not mine;
All I had to do was lie in bed and jack off,
While the souls of tin birds crenulated against
The upstairs porch with the broken-down
Jacuzzi that molded and grew with the ululations
Of tadpoles and unfortunate princes, puckering undiademed:
And I wanted her lips, and ping-pong-
And the shadows stretched throughout the weeping
Hallways of the school,
The smoked out bathrooms,
The unicorns in the soccer field, the cherry red
Keyed cars;
She was standing out there vacillating like a fever dream
Like tapped crystal with something sweet inside;
And I do this because of my stuttering scars,
And because she is there hanging over me like grapes
I cannot reach- I cannot reach because the words are
Not yet mine-
And she is sitting straight in front of me. Sometimes
She turns around and smiles- smiles,
But I can’t really understand-
and the buses leave, and the schools
Leaves- the cormorants leave-
The esplanade remains green and open even as winter
Tiptoes under this women’s opalescent throat:
Like a fish suffocating in his hands, fat-bellied, the children
Like roe dripping out from behind….
Like precious gems
And she is not mine.