Monday, March 28, 2011

Improv', Week 11

Love Explained

by Jennifer Michael Hecht 

Guy calls the doctor, says the wife’s   
contractions are five minutes apart.   
Doctor says, Is this her first child?
guy says, No, it’s her husband.

I promise to try to remember who   
I am. Wife gets up on one elbow,

says, I wanted to get married.   
It seemed a fulfillment of some

several things, a thing to be done.   
Even the diamond ring was some

thing like a quest, a thing they   
set you out to get and how insane

the quest is; how you have to turn   
it every way before you can even

think to seek it; this metaphysical   
refraining is in fact the quest. Who’d

have guessed? She sighs, I like   
the predictability of two, I like

my pleasures fully expected,   
when the expectation of them

grows patterned in its steady   
surprise. I’ve got my sweet

and tumble pat. Here on earth,   
I like to count upon a thing

like that. Thus explained   
the woman in contractions

to her lover holding on
the telephone for the doctor

to recover from this strange   
conversational turn. You say

you’re whom? It is a pleasure   
to meet you. She rolls her

eyes, but he’d once asked her   
Am I your first lover? and she’d   
said, Could be. Your face looks   
familiar. It’s the same type of

generative error. The grammar
of the spoken word will flip, let alone

the written, until something new is   
in us, and in our conversation.

My Improv':

Sonograms of Love

Nurse says, Congratulations, Mrs. Haper! Today we can tell- would you like to see the sex?
Lady says, please don't be so excited, it's not mine... or his. 
Nurse reply's, it's nothing to be ashamed of honey, many men can't produce aggressive sperm.
Wife says, that may be true doc', but my beach-ball plump stomach and your ultrasound says different, we aren't in love ya' know.

Relax. Sperm donors drink coffee too- smoke
a couple packs a day. Time release stimulants lock

in the hard erection long enough to stop
the scent of cherry-red licorice from sticking

breast to breast. He runs wind-chapped
fingers with a sober suavity through

mouse-oxidized hair, scissoring across
tangled twines, patches of passion left

over from an appointment with a phallic
cylindrical plastic, a worthy variety of pent-

house "get-the-job-done" mags, and him--
new Abraham of pregnancy, literally a father

among nations whose bird-beaked nose,
a dominant gene in all, is more of a trademark

than discovering the sex. So while Mrs. Well-
To-Do O.B.G.Y.N squirts another liquidy

cold load on the patient's stomach, rubbing it
over with a metal see-through lens, the wife

says, Beauty is a whore, I sometimes
say. I like money better.  We call these sonograms

of love. Smiling she looks one last time
at the nurse, compliments her handwork, and before

lying her head back onto the cushioned
table she purses her flesh-pink plumps

and says, My husband and I are merely
voyeuristic creatures, this is our 23rd...

and our income. The nurse tips
off each latex into the metal can, washes

three times with rubbing alcohol, closes
the oak-wood door, and scurries to find her boss

telling him she quits. Oh! she pipes, you have a 
pregnant patient in 302 waiting for her sonogram.




























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