Unwelcome Come-on XXIII
For breakfast: pickled herring, eggs and beans,
but then I brushed and flossed like every day,
sucked mouth strips redolent of Germolene
and smelled my breath to check it was okay.
I’ve gargled twice with FreshBurst Listerine;
I’m sweeter than a sprig of mint in May.
So come on Darling, give your man a kiss—
I’ve spent a ton on chemicals for this.
Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Richard Stockton College of NJ. Her fifth chapbook, Selected Poems of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, is forthcoming from Barefoot Muse Press. Visit her online at www.annamevans.com.