Michael Meyerhofer

How Thirteen Famous Men Performed Cunnilingus

I.     Beethoven

Badly. Blame deafness,
his inability to hear the gasps
of his audience, to glean
their favored chord and tempo.
But wasn’t he always stuck
in the sonata of his own mind,
his faith in movements
so grandiose, no mere man
could play them?

II.    Abraham Lincoln

With his legs hanging
over the edge of an always
too-short bed, trying
to shake off his boots
without breaking
his hard-won rhythm,
that emancipating stride.

III.   Jesse Owens

Note his upright stance—
all that birdbone and sinew—
as he staunchly resists
the usual sprinters’ instinct
to lean one’s face toward
the finish line, impossibly far
though he will cross it,
as always, in record time.

IV.    Shakespeare

Like she was the goatskin sheet
on which he calligraphed
all he’d learned from taverns,
streets that smelled of lamp oil,
the brass mouths of dockworkers
with nothing else to offer.
If it works, and you’re naked,
it’s anything but plagiarism.

V.     Salvador Dalí

When desert-saints kneel
before the floating rose,
when clocks melt
and even Hitler goes quiet
in his chair facing the ocean—
then, my friend, you’re
finally getting somewhere.

VI.    Ben Franklin

So well, he didn’t have to
run for president just to have
his name whispered

over paper fans, between
sips from wine stems
and teacups whose steam left

honeydew on the ceiling,
beading off those still
swaying chandeliers.

VII.   Jesus Christ

And he said:
The kingdom of heaven
is inside you
and all around you.

And she said: Shut up,
and guided him
into a better position
by tugging his uncut hair.

VIII.  J.D. Salinger

Like the only safe place
in the whole world
for her— for anyone—
was there: just
behind his front teeth.

IX.    Jacques Cousteau

As though his tongue
were a pearl-knife, probing
the briny shipwrecks
of less fortunate sailors,
hoping one last time
to make the headlines.

X.     Masamune

The way he made swords:
fold air over raw steel,
hammer until the sparks fly.
Fold and repeat. From time to time,
carry what you love
from the furnace mouth
and quench it in cold water.

XI.    Ghandi

They will tell you
it’s impossible
but a simple mouth

can topple empires.
You only need to know
like your own breath

the shape and glide
of every letter.
Know, too, the lilts

between letters,
that primordial yoga
of movement and repose.

Be patient, my son.
Take heart.
Practice often.

XII.   Sigmund Freud

Martha, it could be
that my tongue
is the equivalent of a flaccid
spoon with which I am
trying to tunnel my way
back into that un-
attainable place of psycho-
sexual sublimation.
If so, Martha,
I couldn’t care less.

XIII.  The Buddha

Her left thigh to his
right cheek. Her right

thigh to his left cheek.
Your legs are roads,

he said. She asked
which he meant to follow.

The middle path, he said,
and began to hum.

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Michael Meyerhofer's most recent book of poems, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Prize. His previous books include Blue Collar Elegies (Steel Toe Books) and Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award). He lives in Indiana where he teaches poetry, collects medieval weapons, and stays up late writing politically charged letters to the editor.