My calendar tells me it’s today. Sharon has written so many wonderful poems it’s hard to choose one–poems about sex, about children, about her awful childhood, odes. But today I chose I joke poem, or maybe a poem that is a joke and more than a joke:
The Pope’s Penis
It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat–and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.
Sharon Olds