The History of Sexuality

JOSEPH HARRINGTON

Chapter 1

Once upon the beginning,

the founder of Safety Day

bred on this treeless plain.

The zoo had its lean years:

the animals served us food

The barking ribbed-face deer

consumed whole trees

when the shelling ceased.

Chapter 2

“Will the distinguished animal

please declare himself

a bug or a bird? We cannot

abide generic ambiguity in

unidentical flying objects—

Condom and Gomorrah

perished thus!”

Chapter 3

Erotic fantasies disturbed him

when he was not having them;

their lack of evolutionary function

caused him to write: “Mommy

o mommy my head and my body

want different things.”

Chapter 4

“The peristyle is a clerestory,” he wrote,

“penetrated by console brackets forming

a transition to the ribbed surface of the cap.”

Thus did the dome expand and contract,

a symbol of the cheerful government

where daddy is in charge of alphabets,

where suffragettes in the basement

rise from living rock like the ascent of man.