Stuart Bartow

Cat Women On Mars

or was it the moon? That fifties black and white
made in a few weeks
for a few thousand with starlets
and hunks, scripted by alcoholic writers
wound up on midnight TV
where adolescent boys like me
absorbed this weird idea
about sexual identity staged as fantasy
or visa versa. It’s an old story.
Odysseus and his men strand
their phallic space ship
on an alien island inhabited
by sexy magical females.
But never forget, my brother dreamers,   
beware of strange stars: that lost crew
as often as not failed to crash on Venus,
landed on cannibal wildernesses,
bleak places, cyclops.

 

Stuart Bartow teaches at SUNY Adirondack where he directs the school's Writers Project, but if he had more money he would retire tomorrow and go fishing.