Autumn 2000

 

Michael Benedikt

THE NIPPLEWHIP

 

Besides, what else could it be, this toothpick with this exceptionally long eyelash attached to it with a spot of glue? And oh, here come the fervent horsemen now, clutching their horses' bridles, waving their implements overhead in the air, and galloping down from the shoulders in order to lift up the T-shirt or brassiere. Devils, torturers, these fiends know all too well that too much talk about the nipplewhip, could some day cost the poet a fellowship! Disgruntled, the lovers part. Together, the poet and his love poems sink together into a gloom of handkissing. The little horsemen fall to the floor, and later on someone wearing a pair of carpet-slippers shuffles sleepily and disconsolately over to them and sweeps them all up. Meanwhile, at this very moment, all over that part of town with no pretensions towards taste or art, laughing, impetuous people are flinging themselves directly into the path of the nipplewhip

Earlier versions of these poems originally appeared in Night Cries (Wesleyan UniversityPress, l976), copyright Michael Benedikt l976. Benedikt, whose work is widely represented on the web, and who's cited by About.com as "Poet Laureate of The Net," is the author of 5 books of poetry: The Body, Sky, Mole Notes, Night Cries and most recently, The Badminton At Great Barrington. He's also the editor of several landmark anthologies of poetry and plays including The Poetry of Surrealism and The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. URL: http://members. aol.com/benedit1/miniweb.html Guide to Michael Benedikt Mini-Web

 

 

 

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