Marriage Sonnet # 1

With every wet towel left to soak into
the depths of my pillow, I love you
less. And less each time the shampoo
doesn’t return from the other bathroom.
Gone is the romance shaving with a razor
dulled from the daily grind of your legs.
Get your own. Pour out your coffee dregs.  
Throw away the Ramen noodle cup before
it dribbles on the couch. Wear anything
but those gray sweat pants—that gray shirt.
Italian. Not teriyaki. Never frozen yogurt.
When I ask you to bring home something
tasty, just once, come through the door
breathless, naked, flushed red with haste.

Marriage Sonnet # 6

Did you smash together these two pieces
of soap, you ask me from the shower;
it seems like something you would do.
Really? Because, tell me, what kind
of man takes two halves of  completely
different soaps and smashes them together
just to prolong the life and use of mushy
and soluble things? Who perverse enough
to mold the slender perfumed strip
with the scentless white bar? One
all lather, the other for oily skin.
Who patient enough to preside over
the coalescing? Who, in their vanity,
would set their rough work out to be seen?  

Christopher McCurry teaches high school English and is the Junior Editor at Accents Publishing. His poems have appeared in Limestone, the Los Angeles Review, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Rattle, and others. He is a Kentucky Teacher Fellow at the Bread Loaf School of English and the author of Splayed, a book of love poems.