[Michael Cantor]

Carl - you're going to regret encouraging me. That was part (the best part) of a triolet. Here's the entire thing:

Poetry at the 92nd Street Y: A Triptych

Founded in 1939, the Unterberg Poetry Center at New York’s 92nd Street Y is widely recognized for both its famed Reading Series, featuring writers in every genre as well as dramatic productions and celebrations of classic literature; and the Writing Program, which offers a wide range of literary seminars, lectures and writing workshops.

The Relationship

When I first heard him, uptown, at the Y
on Ninety-Second Street, I wasn’t shy.
He had an angry elegance that I
envisioned bared; plus poetry to die
for, and that jet black hair. I used my
look, the one that tends to terrify
most men, and he looked back. We sent for Thai

and pizza all that weekend, got so high,
we never left the bed. Who’d prophesy
that almost thirty years have now gone by
and I would still be here? Sad butterfly,
I know that when his hand half-strokes my thigh
he’s picturing his students – so I cry,
and all I think is, “Why, you moron, why?”


The Workshop

When he first joined our workshop at the Y,
I saw the open shirt, the golden chai
that nested in his hairy chest, and all my
instincts were that he would occupy
the balance of my days; that he and I -
poetic pairing, twinned for life - would vie
for prizes and each other’s love, defy
the odds and publish, thrive and multiply.

He took a stack of sheets a half-inch high,
began, ’Tween dawn and dusk, my heart is nigh
to sweetly ask if thee wouldst with me lie,
and as we laughed we noticed that his fly
was open. “Zip it!” the cool Jamaican guy
called out, and I cried, “Yes!”, and caught his eye.


The Great Man

Following the reading at the Y,
I shook his hand, surprised he seemed so spry,
if liver-spotted; so I joked that I
liked whiskey, men and my Salvages dry;
and stood a bit too close, and brushed his thigh.
He leaned towards me, intoned a soft reply,
“Let us go then,” and I thought I’d die!

He proved as rich, yet modest, as his tie;
and loved to tease, to offer and deny,
to use his clever tongue to crucify
me, pinned and wriggling like a butterfly,
until I’d shake and cry. How I miss my sly
old Possum-puss; my secret love; my wry,
dry, ragged clause; my Sweeney-pie; my guy!