The Ballade of Hirsuteness of Yore, and: Morning Sex

Abstract

The Ballade of Hirsuteness of Yore, and: Morning Sex Julie Kane (bio) The Ballade of Hirsuteness of Yore Where, pray tell, in what sewer drain Reposes that pectoral rug That seemed to the young Julie Kane Such a poppyfield-like drug When she’d nestle her hairless mug [End Page 72] On a boyfriend’s chest? Razors, Nair— Be damned! Calvin Klein models—ugh! Where are the shows of frontal hair? Where did Catholic high-school swains With the holy medals she dug (Hypnotic on silk cord or chain Over chest fur and swimming trunks) Go? Younger women just shrug; They don’t understand her despair, Out of date as the jitterbug. Where are the shows of frontal hair? Yet those same old boyfriends might faint To see how she has been plucked Since the days when they’d tell her, “It’s plain You’re a natural redhead, my love.” These days it’s “Brazilian,” one tuft In a fanciful shape, down there, In place of that seventies shrub. Where are the rows of pubic hair? Black, curly vee in Casey’s scrubs, In Playboy crotch shot: gone, but where? When did we all go smooth as slugs? Where are the shows of frontal hair? [End Page 73] Morning Sex Pre-Viagra, pre-Cialis, When my beaux were young and randy, Always poking with a phallus, It was just a snack, like candy. How I miss those long-bygone days When the flesh was firm and fecund: Now the snack’s become the entrée, And there’s not a hope of seconds. Julie Kane Julie Kane can remember Khrushchev banging his shoe, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and the birth of pantyhose, though she tries in vain to pass for Gen X. Her new book, Jazz Funeral, won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Copyright © 2009 University of Nebraska Press