Laura Madeline Wiseman / My Imaginary

   Laura Madeline Wiseman is the recipient of the 2009 Academy of American Poets Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is a doctoral candidate and teaches English. Her second chapbook, Ghost Girl, is forthcoming from Pudding House. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Feminist Studies, MARGIE, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. Other awards include the Mari Sandoz Award in fiction, the Will Jumper Award in poetry, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. She is co-editor (with Christine Stewart-Nunez) of the forthcoming anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Fight Gender Violence, (Finishing Line Press). Like a Honeymoon My imaginary cock joins Humans Anonymous. In a back row I slouch in sunglasses, a trench coat with the collar turned up. The cocks sit in a circle. Bad coffee percolates by baskets of fake sugar. Blue smoke obscures wrinkles and sags. The room wafts the odor of the unattended. I stiffen when my imaginary cock speaks. I haven’t had a