Illustrative Poem The Whip

I spent the night turning in bed,
my love was a feather, a flat

sleeping thing. She was
very white

and quiet, and above us on
the roof, there was another woman I

also loved, had
addresses myself to in

a fit she
returned. That

encompasses it. But now I was
lonely, I yelled,

but what was that? Ugh,
she said, beside me, she put

her hand on
my back, for which act

I think to say this
wrongly.

Robert Creeley

in For Love: Poems 1950-1960, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962

Barnwood magazine
Barnwood Press