Uneasy Rider

By Diane Wakoski b. 1937 Diane Wakoski

Falling in love with a mustache

is like saying

you can fall in love with

the way a man polishes his shoes

which,

of course,

is one of the things that turns on

my tuned-up engine

those trim buckled boots

(I feel like an advertisement

for men’s fashions

when I think of your ankles)

Yeats was hung up with a girl’s beautiful face

and I find myself

a bad moralist,

a failing aesthetician,

a sad poet,

wanting to touch your arms and feel the muscles

that make a man’s body have so much substance,

that makes a woman

lean and yearn in that direction

that makes her melt/ she is a rainy day

in your presence

the pool of wax under a burning candle

the foam from a waterfall

You are more beautiful than any Harley-Davidson

She is the rain,

waits in it for you,

finds blood spotting her legs

from the long ride.

Diane Wakoski, “Uneasy Rider” from The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971). Copyright © 1971 by Diane Wakoski. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (1971)

Biography

Diane Wakoski, described as an "important and moving poet" by Paul Zweig in the New York Times Book Review, is frequently named among the foremost contemporary American poets by virtue of her experiential vision and her unique voice. Wakoski's poems focus on intensely personal experiences—on her unhappy childhood, on the painful relationships she has had with men and, perhaps most frequently, on the subject of being Diane . . .

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