Was the line in a stanza in
a yellow book that my mother
had. It was very small and very
thin. It was golden yellow and had

a girl with hair that same color walking
through a honey-wheat field on the dust
jacket, which I took off many times. Inside
was an inscription from my Aunt Emma who

died of a brain tumor at fifty-four, my mother’s
sister. I was too young to know what the title
of the poem meant. I had never been eaten out
before. And it was the first poetry book I saw,

way back before I was writing poems. It just
stuck in my head like Wonder bread does in
your stomach. I wasn’t anywhere near a woman
when I read “*******” But now I shave down

there so there is less hair to get entangled in any
guy’s teeth, or worse yet choked on or, gag
swallowed and rushed off to the hospital –
death by pie/gawd what a way to die