Joseph Di Prisco: California Poets Part 11, Five Poems

Joseph Di Prisco

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Joseph Di Prisco

Five Poems

HOW TO COMPOSE THE SEX SCENE

Suture your Kama Sutra, sex position talk’s

Passé, but sex prepositions? Not so fast:

On, in, under, through, over, with, into, among,

Aboard, below, during, after, aloft, astride,

Except, concerning, beyond, hard by, before,

Upstage, wherewith, whereby, & downstream.

Now let’s turn attention to precious bodily fluids.

Which is your showtime go-to? No wrong answers.

Or maybe one or two were I in the blast radius.

Remember your spiciest night ever? Tied up

On the bedpost? Whipped cream (what a mess).

Shirts draped over lamps in quest of mood.

(Hey, fire hazard!) Oysters mignonette on

The half shell galore, chilled on the tongue,

Dom Perignon sipped from a rubied pump,

Powdered lines along a smooth, supple thigh.

Wait, was that you pawing Lolita on the settee?

These days that’s deemed textually inappropriate.

A petite paradox to embrace, being sex: because

Inappropriate is what turns one appropriately on.

Remember when someone rolled right off the bed

And you could not stop laughing—or my nose

From bleeding? Pleasure is about such boundaries

To permeate. (You taught Jan. term on the theme!)

How to write the sex scene? Okay, starters: It’ll have

Nothing to do with your having sex. Speaking of which:

I take issue with having sex as it takes salacious issue

With me. For who can say they have sex, which has them.

That explains me grieving, keyboard-cross-eyed,

Watching you watching, blocking out moves to make.

YOUR DINNER PARTY

Breaking news tonight: the panda is free,

So load up your wagon with bamboo shoots.

Come on. Who needs a three-hundred-pound

Placenta mammal sous chef rolling around?

Besides, it might be amusing what a poet

Brings to your door, wine being a longshot.

Truth is, you once knew poets from school.

They mastered the names of flowers and birds,

They whispered into your susceptible ear.

So, you searched for them on social media,

Hoping they never married or had children,

That they still lived anywhere but in town.

You want to remember them as they were,

Emotional on precisely the wrong occasion,

Silent when one word would break your heart.

Most of the time poets live on pure aether,

The quintessence of the sky’s upper air,

Where a good meal’s invisible straight up.

They will relish the flavors and scents

Of your fare, served up as only you can.

Now I won’t lie, a poet will likely laugh

At the jokes nobody else gets, but they won’t

Narrate their medical history at length,

Aware as you are that life’s an ongoing

Reckoning, forestalled syndromes of pain.

And that in itself will constitute a gift

For other guests, should you invite them,

Though reconsider such a reckless plan,

Because you and your poet together compose

A wonder cabinet of illusions choreographed.

That’s why midnight is the perfect hour

For your dinner, dress code: favorite cloud

Formation. Let there not be background music,

Either, and let there not be candles aflicker.

Make sure you are situated outside on

The veranda, confident the falling raindrops

Conceal any and all imaginable tears.

Raise up a crystal glass to nothing beyond

Who and what and how you are both there.

A poet is perfect company, invited or not,

For when dawn comes and storms have cleared,

It’ll be time for breakfast, to bake shirred eggs,

Which you have always wanted to make.

LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION

I’m pleased to write in support of __________,

Which is, I know, a hard name to pronounce.

I have known the candidate for some time,

Actually, since time itself stopped and sped up

All at once, which is what I learned about love.

Now, the candidate has not formally asked for

A letter of support, but why should that stop me?

I’ll claim with one hundred per cent assurance that

Were you to hire or admit or honor in your way

This candidate, the world as you know it would

Instantly slide off its axis, rock ‘em sock’em,

As it did once I came to know the candidate

In ways I need not delineate now or ever for

Anyone else’s delectation, but hear me out.

You think you know how it is, but you do not,

How you meet someone and the sky assumes

A changed hue, food in your mouth tastes new.

Wrap a silk scarf around your neck and you feel

Like you’re ice-skating. All books on your shelf

Are bleached of type. You put on a fresh shirt,

Tie your tie and think you should have been

An astronaut or a monk in some alternate life.

You walk on the shore and listen to the gulls

And think I’ll never be this jubilant again.

Yes, the candidate is exactly like that.

I should probably tell you a little bit about

Myself, and the first thing I’d say is most

Of us recommenders are barefaced liars,

Only not me, not here, I’m speaking truth,

Which is why I’m not shooting off this letter,

And which is probably why I wasn’t asked.

Your job, your fellowship, your prize—

You should be so lucky. Let me stipulate

I’ve never technically supervised the candidate,

Or assigned the candidate a grade, evaluated

The candidate in any way that matters to

Anyone but to me. If you craved the candidate

Like I do—like water, like sunlight, like flight—

You would feel as I do, that you’re not worthy.

So let’s just stop pretending. You can never be

Objective, strategic, reasonable, rational enough.

Give the candidate already the fellowship, the job,

The prize. Of course, you’ll plan a celebration,

Where the candidate swears, You, I’ll never leave.

Everyone knows this is untrue. They all leave,

Everyone leaves. It says so right here, inside my coat

Pocket, in this uncomposed letter of recommendation.

I’ll someday visit the candidate in their upstate digs,

Just my luck, Halloween. I’ll mask up, scratch

Icy windowpanes, howl the whole night through.

READING SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET # 73

OVER & OVER, I GIVE UP, GO FOR A HIKE

How many winters, how many, talking to

The trees. They have much to answer for,

Root & branch. They whisper, flirt, swerve,

They gossip about each other, they moan.

That time of year I mayst behold in me

How youth sped past, split between

Not seeing and not believing. Bare ruined

Choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Now bare ruined echocardio and MRI.

You have not lived till the attending observes

Your test results are “medically interesting.”

Whole lifetime to fall in love, that’s not so bad.

Or is it? Count on the trees to be biased,

Breathing in, breathing out, something

I was once fond of doing myself. I look back

On the path I’m following deeper, farther.

Some days extra innings, others shrieking past,

Crows spied from out of the corner of my eye.

Can’t renounce desire, though times I desired

Nothing else more. How many therapists

Did I pay to depress, how many nights

When it was like, “Why not cut the cord?” Stents

And monitors, interventions pharmaceutical,

Protocols du jour. Love swears we can never die,

Because until we do, we never will.

THE CANCELLATION OF SPRING

                                                            For Francesca

There goes spring, peddling that same old lie,

That there’s no such thing as death,

That the world as we know it is—tra-la—all new.

As for Vivaldi, mint juleps and butterflies, though,

Red lanterns in the jaunty breeze: Put me down for

Don’t care—now that you’re not here. I’m too tired

To marvel over a hummingbird’s rubied flash. Now

No reason for creeks not to overflow banks, where

Late the frogs and crickets serenaded pointlessly.

And home? That’s where ghostly voices bounce

Off claustrophobic walls. Renegade kids in parks

Running amok? Dogs sporting in the surf? Enough.

Enough. No more wisteria raging wild into bloom,

No more plucking a bouquet of purple tulips: See?

No one’s crazy in love. And since you won’t appear,

No garden party’s worth dressing up for anymore.

All we’ve left is this dream, nights of riddled sleep,

Where we stand beneath the loom of an unquiet sky.

Above, a little plane is droning, droning, bearing you beyond,

Beyond the waves of California poppies, into the sunlight

We keep dreaming you—yourself—are still dancing upon.

Author Bio:

Joseph Di Prisco is mostly famous for being unknown. His most recent book of poems, his fourth: My Last Resume: New & Collected (Rare Bird). His TMI website: https://www.diprisco.com/

In former lives, he lived in a Catholic monastery, managed restaurants, played cards professionally around the world, and taught for many years. Otherwise: Won a few prizes, published many poems here and there. Published six novels, two memoirs, two books of nonfiction; edited eight anthologies. Directs the Joyce Carol Oates Prize; served on, or chaired, several nonprofits dedicated to the arts, children’s mental health, and education; founded a literary arts / education nonprofit, now mixing it up in its eleventh year, New Literary Project: https://www.newliteraryproject.org/