How To Seduce Your Boss: Perverse Instructions From the Girl Who Smiles Too Much by April Ranger
Read at least one erotic poem at the gala:
words like spine and shudder.
At the holiday staff party, clink his glass.
Laugh. Let him buy you drinks. When he speaks,
make your eyes into deep pools. Part your lips
slightly, like cracking a window
in a crowded room.
You girl, you.
You curved-assed woman with the rioting blood.
You know there are ways to make powerful men listen:
it’s never with words.
You tender-lipped lady, saliva
oiling your jaw, hips swelling like fat roses
pinned to lapels. Isn’t it fun
to play powerful? To play tall?
To have this worldly, wealthy man
licking your breath for crumbs?
To hear him whimper like a teenager on a couch?
When you speak, don’t press your mouth against his ear.
Cast each syllable like a line from your throat.
Watch how he turns toward you like a book page.
Notice how you feel like an author, like you
are writing the story, but when he tells you to meet him
back in his office, ask yourself what happens next,
because when he begs you to beg him to lick your pussy,
you’ll hear yourself beg him to lick your pussy
in a voice bright as a commercial
advertising soap. You’ll convince even yourself.
His hands will move fast. Your skirt will fall
like a stack of paper off a desk.
This isn’t a game, girl,
you girl, you,
it never was, but you’re terrified to lose,
so when he says please, you won’t complain
about the cold cement floor. You’ll lie
flat as a contract. When he asks
to stick it in you, you’ll realize you are the book
now, pulled from the shelf,
split open in his hands.
You wrote this, you’ll think, your tongue
motionless: a rose petal curled on the dance floor.
It will happen quick as a paper cut,
barely mentionable.
If he asks you to put this
in one of your poems, do.
April Ranger is a poet and playwright. Her poems have appeared in Off The Coast and Muzzle Magazine. She performed three times as a member of Boston Cantab’s National Poetry Slam Team and represented Boston Cantab twice at the Individual World Poetry Slam. In 2010, Whistler in the Dark theatre company adapted a selection of her poems into a theatrical piece entitled The Last Flame Left.
I am obsessed with this.