Versatile Villanelle & Sizzling Villanelle
Dustin Brookshire
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Versatile Villanelle
Topping is not for the grieving, for those who need to be filled up and forget their own emptiness. – Joseph Osmundson, “Double or Nothing”
Topping isn’t for those in the midst of grief.
Don’t have a pity party and sit around and cry.
A broken heart loves when time is a thief.
To get over someone, you need new beef
off a new menu—yes, from a brand-new guy,
but remember, topping doesn’t mix with grief.
Take deep breaths and lie like a leaf
until your legs hit the air. Ankles high
breakup-sex steals the hurt like a thief.
Think of bottoming as sweet-sweet relief.
Friends noticing a liquid diet won’t pry.
They know the soap opera of topping and grief.
We’ve all been there— questioning the belief
that we’ll find the one before we die,
before time does what it does, like a thief.
Honey, you’ll be able to pull off a verse motif
with ease, no con, without even being sly.
Lust isn’t for those in the midst of grief,
even if your broken love will be taken by a thief.
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Sizzling Villanelle
It is easy enough to devise the plan.
A compliment followed by another. I knew
I’d have an affair with this married man.
A doctor with a wife and kids and a minivan.
He’s bisexual and always horny, eager to screw.
Usually, it’s easy enough for him to plan,
whether the wife’s on a girls’ trip or during the span
of time she’s at the salon. Yes, it’s true
I’ve been hard up for an affair with a married man.
Sex delicious as a steak out of a sizzling pan
is what I need. No want. No desire. You
see— it’s easy enough to devise a plan
when men are so damn predictable. You can
lead a man by his dick when his balls are blue.
You’ll end up in bed with a married man
or in a parking lot giving a hand job in a sedan.
Is this villanelle rooted in lies, or is it true?
You should know lying can be part of the plan.
Maybe I will have an affair with a married man.
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Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth & latest chapbook is Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023) and editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024). More at dustinbrookshire.com.
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