Favorite Poem: Uneasy Rider

Uneasy Rider
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.