Summary

The poem opens as if the speaker is responding to someone who has told her that the moon is keeping her awake, and she replies “It is not the moon, I tell you” (1). She goes on to explain to the unnamed “you,” “It is these flowers / lighting the yard” (2-3). The stanza breaks, but she continues her thought about the flowers, saying “I hate them” (4). The speaker then likens her hatred of the flowers to her hatred of sex. She describes being overpowered: “the man’s mouth / sealing my mouth, the man’s / paralyzing body—“ (6-8).

The speaker moves on to describe “the cry that always escapes” during sex (9), and that it results from “the low, humiliating / premise of union—” (10-11). In the next stanza, the speaker moves inside her mind, saying that tonight, the “question” of desire and the “pursuing answer” affirming consent...