Bik loves Bak and Bok
by Matt Quinn
Sunset finds Bik melancholy and composing a triolet;
where he’s from it really is the only way
to write of love. But his mind slips quickly
into cliché, compares their love to a triple moonrise
above the methane shores of a foaming lava sea – forgets
he’s heard this line a thousand times before in mediocre poetry
and mating psalms. His thoughts flit to sex with Bak and Bok,
and how each triangular genital proboscis tessellates
as perfectly as lock to three-pronged key. His fantasy
moves on to less traditional positions: the three-sided pyramid,
and then the rather dicey “33”. How would a two find love,
he wonders idly, when we’re so clearly made
to three? He’s no bigot, has no wish to offend, would not disown
a couplist friend, he just really does not understand –
and it’s not just sex and glands: a couple is two thirds of three,
how could they fill that gap? Three is company, two is not quite
right, is lop-sided, unstable. How could a couple stare into
each other’s sideways-facing eyes across a table
without the use of mirrors? How dull a late night chat that lacked
that sexy three-way dialectic; how lonesome to slime
through triple-moonlit streets without a third tail intertwined –
and how could two tails plait? Bik sighs and shakes out
his cranial tentacles to chase away these thoughts,
tries once more to pen the triolet, spots the cliché, starts again:
Three hearts beat as one, he writes, then sighs once more
and scores it through with two thick lines –
pauses, adds a third.