Conjugal in  General   

A man is bending his wife. He is bending her
around something that she has bent herself
around. She is around it, bent as he has bent
her.

He is convincing her. It is all so private.

He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he
is bending her around the tripod of his camera.
It is as if he teaches her to swim. As if he teaches
acrobatics. As if he could form her into something
wet that he delivers out of one life into another.

And it is such a private thing the thing they do.

He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is
smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding
her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there.

He climbs into the wallpaper among the flowers. And
his buttocks move in and out of the wall.

By Russell Edson

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Other poems by Russell Edson:

• A Historical Breakfast
• A Journey Through The Moonlight
• A Performance At Hog Theater
• Accidents
• Angels
• Antimatter
• Ape
• Ape And Coffee
• Conjugal
• Counting Sheep
• Elephant Dormitory
• Erasing Amyloo
• Grass
• Hands
• Mr. Brain
• On The Eating Of Mice
• One Lonely Afternoon
• Paying The Captain
• Sleep
• Soup Song
• The Alfresco Moment
• The Autopsy
• The Breast
• The Bridge
• The Changeling
• The Closet
• The Death Of A Fly
• The Fall
• The Family Monkey
• The Father Of Toads
• The Fight
• The Floor
• The Gentlemen In The Meadow
• The Having To Love Something Else
• The Lighted Window
• The Man Rock
• The Marionettes Of Distant Masters
• The Melting
• The Ox
• The Pattern
• The Philosophers
• The Pilot
• The Position
• The Reason Why The Closet-Man Is Never Sad
• The Road
• The Sad Message
• The Theory
• The Toy-Maker
• The Tree
• The Wounded Breakfast
• Vomit
• You