A man I’ve never dreamed before walks into my apartment and sits in the green chair where I do my writing. He carries in his left hand a large erect penis which he places silently on the floor. The phallus begins to waltz to music I cannot hear, its scrotum a skirt; its testicles, legs cut off at the knees. I want to know why this disfigured manhood has been brought to me. I look up, but my guest is gone. His organ, deflating in short spasms like an old man coughing, spreads itself in a pool of shallow blood. The silence between us is the silence of men.
Richard Newman teaches in the English Department at Nassau Community College. His work has appeared in various publications, including Another Chicago Magazine, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner.
