toothpaste all bent
funny and nice
I like to brush
after every meal
Come to think of it, Miller doesn't need to disrobe to make the kind of love you find in this poem, or throughout the book, in which he sings the praise of cunnilingus. He also writes a tiny, tactful poem about fellatio and even lends a moment of erotic dignity to the seldom-sung art of petting and sweating. In "Kiss," his beloved's nipple wears one of his hands "like a hat," which makes him wonder "what should my/ other hand wear?" It is a question put to bed by the concluding couplet:
my fingers so wet
from your rain.
Terrorists are out to get us, soldiers are running around waving guns and the entire world is turning into a filthy, hateful, murderous mess, facts to which Miller also bears witness, but he contends that there should always be a place in poetry for a big, soppy spot on the sheets. As a big, brutal world is momentarily put aside in favor of the warm, small space of the bedroom, the poems shrink as well -- to great effect.
A. Van Jordan is down with that as well. The impact of a tiny poem is so important to him that he writes a tiny poem about it ("Rant"), and its subject is also erotic in an oral key:
nicked skin, I spill blood
now to show the life in me.
dance, cry, glance, crawl, starve,
tongue, flesh, swarm, trap -- girl, see: men
don't need no big words to beg.
