Ten words, three lines, and a title that does half the work. "Erectile dysfunction" is the language of pharmacy leaflets and waiting rooms, and Dave Bonta uses it to set up a very different kind of confession. The title promises a failure of the body. The poem itself speaks of a failure of presence, and that shift is where its interest lies.
The first line, "at my peak", is slippery on purpose. A peak can be the height of a career, of physical strength, of desire, or even a mountaintop. Set beside that title, it is also a small irony: the speaker claims a summit while the heading announces a collapse. The reader has to hold both at once. Then the second line turns the thought with a simile: "like God not present". Traditionally God is defined by being all-powerful and everywhere at once, so a God who is *not present* is a strange figure, a power that has withdrawn. The word "impotent" never appears, but its opposite, "omnipotent," hovers behind the comparison. The speaker imagines himself as a kind of divinity, strong in principle and missing in practice.
The grammar leaves room for more than one reading. There is no verb and no punctuation, so the line can be taken as "at my peak, like God, [I am] not present," or as a speaker who sees himself as a peak that is felt by no one. The phrase "present to my wife" also repays attention. We would more naturally say present *with* or *for* someone. "Present to" has the ring of attention, of being turned toward another person. Judging by that wording, the poem may be hinting that the real distance is not only physical. The body's failure might be a cause of withdrawal, or the withdrawal might be the deeper trouble, with the body only its symptom. The poem never decides, and that restraint is part of its honesty.
The shape is tight. The lines run three, five and three syllables, so the longest line sits in the middle, exactly where the idea swings from boast to loss. The rhythm falls on the nouns: "at my PEAK," "like GOD not PRES-ent," "to my WIFE." In the middle line, "God not pres-" piles up three heavy syllables in a row, which slows the reader as though the voice were stumbling on the admission. There is no rhyme, but the sound is carefully knitted. The long *i* of "my," "like," "my" and "wife" runs through the poem like a held note. "Peak" and "present" share their opening *p*, and the echo quietly links the height the speaker claims with the absence he confesses.
The possessive "my" frames the poem: "my peak" at the start, "my wife" at the end. The first possession is pride, and the last is relationship. The poem ends on the one other person in it, the one who feels the absence. Because God is absent only to someone who is looking for him, the comparison gives the wife the role of the believer, waiting for a presence that does not arrive. Nothing is said of her feelings, which makes her silence louder. The lowercase letters and missing full stop add to this. The poem trails off without closing, and the absence stays open.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it declines to say. A subject usually handled with jokes or embarrassment is treated with seriousness and without self-pity, and without a single physical detail. By borrowing the language of theology, it lifts a private humiliation into an old question: what does it mean when power and presence come apart? The answer it offers is uncomfortable but humane, that being capable is not the same as being there, and that the people who love us notice the difference.