Cassie Premo Steele’s most recent poem to appear here was I Loved This Landscape into Being (May 2012), from her collection The Pomegranate Papers, available at unbound CONTENT and Amazon. 

I love the way men talk
By Cassie Premo Steele

I love the way men talk
about sports, how metaphors
spout from their mouths–
mitt to the side, lay up,
change of defense.
They are poets, men
when they talk about games.

I love, too, how men talk
about their wives.
The hushed husband awe
at her dailiness, the hard
hard way they to go to work
every day for her,
the blue light in their eyes
when they buy her a 
dress the size she was
ten years ago.

And men make me cry
when they talk about sex,
rough pebbles on the
tongue, spit out,
pretending this is just motion,
it has not made them
come undone.
I want to put my head
on their chest then, say
Hush, don’t swear,
just be quiet. Go to sleep.

I love the way men’s hearts
speak, in cars, in the dark,
in the stands, while they
run. Their hearts are 
the tongues that make 
lyrics and lick us, love
women, make us
listen while they hum.