A Tigress

Sometimes you were a tigress; you were jealous.

You thought I harbored women by the score.

You searched for clues; you hunted. Overzealous,

you pounced. "Who was that blond girl by the door?"

I laughed. I told you, "I don’t even know her!"

I thought it cute and charming. You were mad;

mad in both ways. As if I had the power

to have so many women. True, I had

you, and you were a most impressive conquest:

big game I'd bagged, I wasn't quite sure how.

And then, to be the subject of an inquest:

I felt enhanced. I guess I strutted. Wow.

I must be something. Innocent, the cause

of causeless rage, I'd  joke about your claws.

The Warmth and Ride

The warmth and ride when everything was clear

and you were you and I was simply me,

the prospect fair as far as we could see,

with hope beside us, all we had to fear

behind, or else in front of us so far

it did not need attending, how could we

not feel that we had somehow happily

escaped? What if our kingdom was a car?

We had each other wholly, hand in hand,

the world outside a fantasy, a blur,

a puzzle we wouldn’t need to understand.

Whatever might be waiting to occur

would wait forever. Surely we were blessed!

That happened once or twice. We know the rest.

Bruce Bennett is the author of nine books of poetry and more than twenty poetry chapbooks. His most recent books are Something Like Karma (Clandestine Press, 2009) and Subway Figure (Orchises Press, 2009), and his most recent chapbook is The Holding Stone (Finishing Line Press, 2010). These two poems are from his sequence of sonnets, A Girl Like You, to be published this fall by Finishing Line. Bruce Bennett teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College, where he is Professor and Chair of English and Director of Creative Writing.