I’ve long had a love affair with Leonard Cohen. And while my passion has been life-long and metaphorical, Pegeen Mike O’Flaherty, a fictional character in my work-in-progress, The Death of the Author, claims to have had a much more short-term and physical relationship with the poet, for whom she wrote this poem way back when. Dedicated to Leonard, “Game Theory” is from her now out of print first collection, Penis Envy (Kassandra Press, 1968).

Click on the thumbnail below to get a larger version of the poem!

Game Theory

Poems referenced in Pegeen Mike’s response can be found in Leonard Cohen’s Let Us Compare Mythologies (“Prayer for Messiah”) and The Spice Box of Earth (“As the Mist Leaves No Scar“), and can be previewed on Google Books.

Finally, another of Pegeen Mike’s poems — a retort to “Leda and the Swan” by WB Yeats– can be found here