Jill Alexander Essbaum (born 1971 in Bay City, Texas, United States) is an American poet, writer, and professor. Her most recent collections are the full-length manuscripts Harlot (No Tell Motel, 2007) and Necropolis (neoNuma Arts, 2008). Essbaum’s poetry features puns, wordplay and dark humor, often mixed with religious and erotic imagery. She currently teaches at the University of California Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center in the Masters of Creative Writing Graduate Program. Essbaum’s debut novel, Hausfrau was published March 2015 (Random House).
ON READING POORLY TRANSCRIBED EROTICA
Jill Alexander Essbaum
She stood before him wearing only pantries
and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze.
She had saved her public hair, and his cook
went hard as a fist. They fell to the bad.
He shoveled his duck into her posse
and all her worm juices spilled out.
Still, his enormous election raged on.
Her beasts heaved as he sacked them,
and his own nibbles went stuff as well.
She put her tong in his rear and talked ditty.
Oh, it was all that he could do not to comb.
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POEM
Jill Alexander Essbaum
A clementine
Of inclement climate
Grows tart.
A crocus
Too stoic to open,
Won’t.
Like an oyster
That cloisters a spoil of pearls,
Untouched—
The heart that’s had
Enough
Stays shut.