The sperm hate the egg.
They are afraid of it.
An ogress.
They clot the hot
red anteroom,
clinging to the walls.
She is blue and pulsing.
They are small and inadequate
and lose their tails.
Their chlorine milk begins to spoil.
But on the journey
when the shudder swept them 
into an excited knot and
expelled them all together,
early sight scattered ahead of them.
They traveled like a shower of comets.
t was as if they were the universe.

The egg puts out her slimy pseudopod
and takes the sperm into the jelly.
The sperm are hysterical.
Now the egg is busy changing shape.
The sperm does not want to
be pulled apart into strings.
“Don’t unravel me.” it cries.
The egg does not hear it.
Deep inside the sperm
a seething hatred for the egg.
When I had my tail,
I was free,” the sperm cries.
It remembers the ultimate
vast trajectory.
It remembers them all crying,
“To be or not to be!”