What’s evolution but a whole lot of sex,
the slippery, mutating mix of Y and X?
Man laddered up out of the ooze and the muck,
ascending rung by rung and fuck by fuck—
DNA colliding and combining;
brains and bodies gladly realigning.

Now let us in our turn embrace the dance
and give our separate genes a moment’s chance
to alter, rearrange, exchange, reshuffle
and triumph in the rude ancestral scuffle.
What’s evolution? Just a whole lot of sex,
the slippery, mutating mix of Y and X.

*****

Lisa Barnett writes: “This poem is a testament to the powers of revision. It had a long gestation (or should I say evolution); it was begun in early 2021 and completed in January 2026. For a long time it was just a two-line fragment…then a failed triolet…and ultimately evolved into pentameter couplets.  At some point I was reading Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” which partly inspired the 2^nd stanza. My husband is always partial to my poems about sex, and this was no exception.”

 Lisa Barnett’s poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Measure, New Verse Review, Snakeskin (including this poem), and elsewhere. She is the author of two chapbooks: The Peacock Room (Somers Rocks Press) and Love Recidivus (Finishing Line Press). She lives in Haverford, Pennsylvania with her husband.  

Photo: from Snakeskin, February 2026