Male Enhancement

Friday After Work

by Mo Lynn Stoycoff

after the rush-hour traffic drives the fake smile from your face

and all the week’s hand-shaking and ass-kissing is done

after your teeth and knees are unclenched

after your back’s been ergonomic-ed to death

it takes another eight hours to thaw from the celibate fluorescent haze

of early morning anesthetizing meetings in the conference room

       you hold your lover at first with automated arms

       until you sink slowly into summer as a child 

       when your exodus from have-to

       was as satisfyingly complete as it never has been since

       when your mind, your eyes, your hands, your heart

       your voice and even your ears were yours

       and it was easy to navigate your way to Neverland

       flying softly and effortlessly on the eastern breeze

       no tight muscles, no furrowed brow

       no voice edged with nerves

after piles of alphabetical files stacked on surgical surfaces

after two-way hallways rushing to no one knows where

after the hard supervisory words pitched into your ears

the asphalt colored walls closing in on what you did wrong this time

what procedural error or political misstep took you out of the loop (you don’t want

to be in the loop anyway; loops go nowhere and you want to be anywhere but here)

       like this here in your jeans and tee

       talking to people who know you

       listening to wildly un-canned music among

       candles displaying audacious flames

       sitting on impractical, un-dry-cleanable velvet pillows

       between walls painted the color of forests

       of twisted oaks meant to be climbed and rocks

       meant to be skipped over blue-green river skin

after the rhythmic ticking of the timeclock has blunted you

and you have unseated the handbook and interrupted its hold

after climate control, after differentiated marketing and cost abatement

after team building and cross-functioning, after the bottom line

       now in the arms of your lover as sunken as you are

       you’ve no need for data analysis or “power words”

       in this dim hearth of October’s making, as charmed

       as the fabled cottage of the forest’s only good witch

you have now exited the land of don’t-believe

where mistrust and fear is learned outside the heart

       here is where nothing is smoothed into a plasticine sheen

       here is where this beautiful mess is your beautiful mess

       and all the horrid little snickerings of the high-rise lords and ladies

       have no sway over this, the kingdom of you

Wanted

Vaiva Kovieraitė-Trumpė is a Lithuanian artist who has a master degree in Graphic arts/Printmaking. She is a member of Lithuanian Artists’ Association and Printmaking Artist Association “Graphic i Vast ” (Sweden). Vaiva has presented 14 personal exhibitions in Sweden, France, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania and she participated in more than 70 international group shows all around the world.

Mo Lynn Stoycoff is a writer and visual artist whose poems have appeared in Poetry Now, Rise Up Review, The American Journal of Poetry, California Quarterly, Speckled Trout Review and many other journals and anthologies. Mo works in the performing arts and lives in Central California.