A Conversation With John Donne

    "So what's been happening?" he said
    sounding awfully Southern Californian
    for the Dean of St.Paul's.
    I wasn't sure if he was in his "Holy Sonnets" mood
    or in his "Jack the Rake" phase, so I hesitated
    before answering, but then said the truth.
    "I've been falling in love," I said,
    "with I woman I've known for years,
    but have now come to know in a different way."
    He looked skeptical. I remembered his line
    about it being easier to get a plant pregnant
    than to find a faithful woman, and that even
    if she's faithful when you first meet her
    it won't be long before she's screwing around
    with several guys. This is his cynical side.
    "What can I tell you," I said, "we've gotten so close,
    we're like an e-mail and its reply,
    connected to one another, as one sails off
    into cyberspace to find the other,
    the other's composing an answer to return.
    Such is she to me, who must
    like my other self, click on her mouse
    to send our words full circle, a pulse just
    sent in an instant from her place to my house."
    "Nice conceit," he said, "I get the sexual reference,
    to "her mouse," and how "must" and "just"
    evoke "lust," but what the hell is e-mail?"



    Bio Note
      Fred Moramarco is Editor of Poetry International, an annual poetry journal published at San Diego State University where he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing. His poems have appeared in a wide range of periodicals and on many poetry websites. He is co-editor of Men of Our Time: Male Poetry in Contemporary America and co-author of Containing Multitudes: Poetry in the United States Since 1950 and Modern American Poetry. Poetry chapbooks include Last Minute Adjustments, Act Three and Other Poems, and Love and Other Dark Matters. His "miniature book," Novel, a poem, is published by Greenhouse Review Press.

    Contents
    		 





     Fred

     Moramarco