Poetry

What Boys Want

to lick what's underneath those
Sunday morning skirts
while the sopranos moan

to carry the ashes of dirty
books and hunting guns, to heat
the blood, to recognize the throb

that grows stronger
during the years, to soil
the sheets clean of words

to call it love, that stealth
which makes the girls spread
their thighs wider

                

What Girls Want

to feast on their muffin mouths,
their wild eyes, the silence between
two successive tickings of their heart

to hum, with faked innocence,
their mouths filled with
what boys give them to swallow

to whisper together, their songs
and breaths mingling in a corner
of an abandoned room

to call it love, that stealth
which makes them spread
their thighs wider

©2007 by Kristine Ong Muslim

                                                                                                                                                                                               

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Kristine Ong Muslim has more than 400 poems and stories published/forthcoming in more than 100 print and online journals, magazines, and anthologies worldwide. Her work has recently appeared in elimae, Noneuclidean Café, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Online, Turnrow, and Void Magazine.