When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap—
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a
living?

* * *

"Marriage" (excerpt) from The Happy Birthday of Death by Gregory Corso. Copyright © 1960 and renewed 1988. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.