Nancy Williams Lazar

Forbidden Rhythms

Long before my heart could drum rhythm,
before any notion could stimulate
me down there, I knew from the bare
breasted women in National Geographic
that I was going to feel something.

I had no breasts to undulate or swing low
on a brown belly, but I could forget I was white
and though I had never witnessed
one move, I felt that nipple swing in the wide
open savannah. The African plains

is where my libido awakened, red scarved
around a slender arm, beads layered on a tall
neck near the swagger of a man’s hips in leather
and cloth. I’d never given men much thought
until I found them on the same page;

glossy skin ripening in the drought
of desert, dusty feet dancing in lines
around a man in a wooden mask.
I never read the copy, just leafed through
worn out pages and placed it in the pile
where I could find it again.

Fire Making

He gets tired of fruits, seeds and roots-
and he has had his fill of woman.
He is hungry for meat but that takes
more than just the idea. He needs men
again; invites them to his cave for some
working up, a few paintings- all the right
rituals. The last of the bones to suck.

The night is long, fire is hot. Woman is shared.
In the morning they are off. She has time
to mend skins, dig supper, see how
the others do. Days pass, she might
begin to worry but there is no sign.
Birds are not circling over the canyon.

She discovers plants growing near
with plump fruits; the ones they love.
She saves seeds.
He thinks he could make animals
come to him; the ones they need.
He saves pups.

In another age he comes home tired from the fields.
She turns her attention from her many tasks.

In the night they rub together,
make small fires.

The Sexual Mystique

“God separated sexual pleasure and beauty
into ten parts. Nine parts he gave to women.
One part to men.” - From an ancient Talmudic essay.

One Part Man

She fits him well but not too neatly; he knows
this in his bones. She is his ideal.
There is an arrangement: a thirty-five-hundred-

year- old history of him undermining
her. He doesn’t want her to have
her nine parts. He cuts away at them,

in the flesh or to the core of her heart.
To tame her he must ruin her.
He makes war to keep her off her feet.

Nine Parts Woman

She longs for him in ways he can’t understand.
A bell, a tower, snow kindles her
erogenous zones. Beyond wishes she has dreamed

him sheeting against her; it is impossible.
She bakes a cake, a mound of frosting
to wither the shell. She lives in the closet

where he keeps the best linen. In the night
she bleeds, her war with herself
sparking darkly.