The Whip
I spent a night turning in bed,
my love was a feather, a flat
sleeping thing. She was
very white
and quiet, and above us on
the roof, there was another woman I
also loved, had
addressed myself to in
a fit she
returned. That
encompasses it. But now I was
lonely, I yelled,
but what is that? Ugh,
she said, beside me, she put
her hand on
my back, for which act
I think to say this
wrongly.
Robert Creeley, “The Whip” from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975. Copyright © 1982 by Robert Creeley. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.
Source:
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975
(University of California Press, 1982)
