Archives :: Ace Boggess
"Would You Have Any Problem Selling Dildos to Men?"
Appeared in the Fall 2004 issue.
[posed in 1994 by Priscilla Pope, co-owner of Budget Tapes & Records (Charleston, WV) as the first question during a job interview]
The Marine on day leave, hair & eyes tight
with formality, hands trembling as if a shot rang out,
stepped into the sex room, winced to witness
oils that made incense out of flesh, raspberry-
flavored edible undies, illustrated books,
the vibrating tongue, the inflatable Fuck-Ewe,
padded whips & porn films—shelves &
spinning racks lined with so many physical tools
for the psyche’s work. Faster than a charge through
artillery bursts & rifle rounds, he snapped up
a simple flesh-tone—“shaped like the real thing.”
At the checkout counter, he missed my gaze
like a blind marksman, said, muffled, through barely-
open lips, “for my wife when I’m not here,”
his packaged prosthetic proof to her he loved her,
cared about her human needs. But I, with my coolly-
devilish young man’s grin & earlier offer—
“help you find what you’re looking for?”—
demoralized him more than twenty bodies, bloody,
bayonetted at his feet: that I might think him kinky,
gay, might mock him. He stood there erect &
engorged with flush while I took his money,
then he turned away without his change,
exited mumbling: “something, something, love . . .”
View bio information and additional poems published in Half Drunk Muse on the author's main archive page.
Copyright 1999-2012 Ace Boggess.