Collage: For 14 Lovers ~Judith Epstein

no one else
keeps lists like this
no mature emotionally stable woman
would comb through her calendars
counting off
         28 months now
checking off
         the dates
         the affairs
         the one night stands
14 lovers anyone else
would stop counting at 3
anyone else would lose interest
or at least repress
this satisfaction at seeing the names
scribbled on the back of an old envelope

The Lovers:
1.
your name could have been anguish
or loneliness
confusion
but what did it matter
you have taken my virginity
I was past 21 and god knows
it had been a burden by then
I needed you
a stranger to take it from me
I should have been grateful
my god you were a stranger
and I had waited 21 years

2.
I floundered
in a closet with you like drowning
alone in the middle of some ocean

3. 
I was always a slow learner
shy in school
I never asked questions
and with you I finally learned
with surprise and hidden embarrassment
that men have pubic hair

4. 
you had refused me even a touch until
one night very drunk you seduced me
in my own livingroom tenderly and
talking through it explaining years
abruptly near dawn you told me to leave
making me a whore for the first time
and in the safety of my own house

5.
and you took me in the water
and on the grass and then
standing me up by a fallen log for support
from behind and back home alone
I felt educated

6.
the same long summer
you were a further education
almost an experiment

7.
I wonder if you could find a touch
I wouldn't love.  You appalled me with
morning sex and I resented every lover after
you who couldn't get it up before noon
you kissed me
and rolled me
stuck it in
and I throbbed but
never came loving
every god damned minute of you
loving the being taken
wondering why
lover after
lover later all the clitoral caresses
could not compensate and how I could
come and come and orgasm after
orgasm just through
burst into tears

8.
you looked like 7 I didn't care who you were
But you looked so much like him
how could you be so different?

9.
you took me because I was easy
because I was angry and wanted
a quick little revenge lay.
You were serving coffee in the store
where you sold roach clips and earrings
at exhorbitant prices,
and you took me

10.
I took you because you were easy

11.
you insignificant little bastard

12.
they said you were built
like a greek god
and I
wanted to see
for myself

13.
you walk into my house
as if it was a restaurant
                    what would you like sir?
                    one friendship?
                    a little involvement on the side perhaps?
                    none today sir?
                    sure, hold the involvement.
                    and how would you like that friendship
                    sir?           oh
                                                 your way,
                    I see.
you call me as if
I was a catering service
                    can we help you to something sir?
                    one hot cunt, delivered?
                    how flattering sir what size
                    would you like the breasts?  why
                    we're almost there already,
                    we've already called for the taxi
the 50 cents change
is your stud fee.
you seduce us all in the same sturdy
brass bed in the light
of your constant oil lamp,
and with such discretion
we might never know how often
you tell those stories
of great uncles and Jessee James or
how many nights
the oil burns.

14.
all the girls in the workshop lounge
talk about your style and the size of your prick.
me, I got a bladder infection from you -
honeymoon cystitis, the doctor called it - but
I knew it was from that weird position;
my legs on your shoulders and you
raised up on your arms like that
your eyes so far away and constantly
watching, my face and then your prick thrusting,
watching so intently that I had to look too: that
was what did it
ten dollars for vibramycin but I didn't mind.
I'd never had it done like that
to me before and I learned
to watch from you;
your face almost
perfectly controlled just until
you came.

---------------------------------------------------------------

if you keep getting the wrong answers
maybe you're starting at the wrong place
it can be so easy
it could have been as easy as a list
scribbled on the back of an old envelope

oh my lovers
your name could have been
anguish or loneliness
confusion but instead
you had none
1 to 14 you have no name
the muscles all the way around my neck
tighten and I am drawn repeatedly
to the 1 Ching and 3 special pennies
I must know where everyone is
and how things are going for
anyone I still love
I must keep lists
all the time and always
keep adding to them
months and names
and maybe indexes of positions
and moods that I can correlate
to the moon or my own
peculiar cycle
I must have astrological charts
and symbols of my own identity
to remind me to stay alone
a lot
I know how easy it would be
to get lost somewhere
to lose the lists
and the silver ring that I never take off
and stop having these poems
change the numbers back to names
have children maybe and
give them all names
to learn by rote memory

these poems nourish me
and i will wear it
if lists are my sanity
I will keep them
if numbers are my salvation
i will never find the names

(as printed by the Iowa City Women's Press Collective's All Women Are Free to Read Their Poetry, 1972)