One Night Stand

One Night Stand


by Jack Spicer

Listen, you silk-hearted bastard,
I said in the bar last night,
You wear those dream clothes
Like a swan out of water.
Listen, you wool-feathered bastard,
My name, just for the record, is Leda.
I can remember pretending
That your red silk tie is a real heart
That your raw wool suit is real flesh
That you could float beside me with a swan’s touch
Of casual satisfaction.
But not the swan’s blood.
Waking tomorrow, I remember only
Somebody’s feathers and his wrinkled heart
Draped loosely in my bed.


Published over on The Poetry Foundation

Jack Spicer, “One Night Stand” from My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2008). Used by permission of Peter Gizzi for The Estate of Jack Spicer.