Aria

I have a particularly thick shaft

is something a porn star might say

using a deceptively mundane tone

in the midst of a job interview

at a Santa Monica café. He might

slide a polaroid across the table

nudging aside a basket of hand-cut

fries and a small tin of lemon aioli

so the man in sunglasses could

make sense of his tumescence.

What if that producer began to sing

in gorgeously enunciated Italian:

an aria of unornamented intonation

that bespoke genuine emotion

regarding the loneliness of the flesh

caught in a flashbulb and framed

like some sort of battered criminal.

Would the rest of the seated crowd

raise their voice in swollen chorus?

Perhaps the man who slid the picture

would fall to his knees weeping,

astonished at the understanding

finally granted to his member,

astonished to have found himself

crying in a poem about his cock.