Category Archives: Poetry

sky without rain

03 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on sky without rain

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

News reports state that the “Angel of Kobane,” Rehana, a teenage Kurdish fighter, a symbol of resistance against the Islamic State, has been beheaded by ISIS militants.

Home is where bodies lay down; the headless
corpse of Rehana, left in the dust. Home

is dust. Where is your skull? I want to bless
each part of you. Kiss your ruined lips. Comb

out your dark, undone hair. Your people say,
“Sehid na merin”/ “Martyrs never die;”

yet all the taps in the camps are dry, pray
there is water for all. Home is now sky

without rain. Home is now Kobane ablaze.
To go back home you need to be complete.

I will wash you. Just show me where your skull
was thrown. Like all dead, you’re lost in the haze.

Prayers are lies. We’ll say anything, sweetmeat,
for that taste: righteous, bittersweet, mournful.

][][

notes:

As of this writing the Battle of Kobane was launched by Islamic State militants (ISIS) on September 16, 2014, in order to capture the town of Kobane (also known as Ayn al-Arab) in Syria. The phrase, “Sehid na merin” is Kurdish in origin.

yeti

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Poetry

≈ Comments Off on yeti

Tags

, , ,

At ten thousand feet
the mountain deer

spots a scant shadow, like
that of a tree on a hill

moving slowly away
and the dog wonders

do tonight’s footprints
belong to a beast?

This legend moves brimmed
with sadness, blinking in

the frozen heights and
like our myths

it will go down
with a howl.

yoked-nasty

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on yoked-nasty

Tags

, , , , ,

I can’t sleep. My dreams ruin me. My dreams
of beasts yoked-nasty with Venus figures

hoofed and urged. Urge and scream. I hate their screams.
Clover honey dripping from their fingers.

This is not my real face, nor my real name.
Nothing about me is real, though I lay

stripped, so that you can eat away my shame.
Eat til you gag. What runs through me will slay

any mortal. My fingers quivering,
The buzz cock flickering; the purple moon.

I can’t sleep. Mouth full. Alcohol and pears.
I am night’s poison. Tossing and turning.

I am the teacup. I am the typhoon
making such a fuss over Hell’s nightmares.

MONGREL’S HOUR [on all hallows’ eve]

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on MONGREL’S HOUR [on all hallows’ eve]

Tags

, , , , , ,

Thousand names for flesh and its answering
silence. Fold into you. Like so. Like so.

A child’s cry. Of pain and of pleasuring;
but not a cry, no foal’s moan that I know,

no lamb. No body turned to face the trees.
Autumn branches, immaculate muscles

grinding, we all grind but nothing will please.
Nothing that I can touch. Leaves stripped. Mongrel’s

hour. Let the grass weep in my image. Frown
as I swallow down what you did not do.

Here are the names that I give. Grave robber;
they dug and they took. You heard my scream down

in the field, you heard my bleating. But you
never replied; never raised a finger.

the myth of arrival

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Poetry

≈ Comments Off on the myth of arrival

Tags

, , , ,

«El rechazo me liberó»
“Rejection set me free”
— The Monolators (2003)

I.
All this splendor seething. In
the airy green here is the head,

the heart, tendons, the blackened
shoulder that beats and breathes its reign –

and I – the child of an idle brain –
shook my head to scrap.

II.
Blue is my belly
intestines

entwined
I have been a
poor parent

to my desires
I wish to cut them out

translucent
alkalinic; the edge
of the blade at
point of entry.

III.
Patience roots in
this, so hard to slow
down these tangled
desires they demand
so much. Weary

at times, at tasks,
to do without,
make sacrifices
before
these
cravings
dry up.

new doorways

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on new doorways

Tags

, , , , , ,

From the back of the throat, phlegm or poem,
what we cough up is the same. Something hard

we find we cannot choke down. Hard, irksome
pain, you have become much like a barnyard

squeal, skin flick groan, slaughterhouse yap; the marred
bit of the song we skip over in haste.

Anything than to listen to those scarred
voices sing. Better to escape shame faced,

guts a pitapat, than to stay debased
by the things we have no control over.

Here is my throat, my O of mouth, the taste
of wind rising up, filling the puncture

wound of my chest; gun shot like doors, a new
doorway hole that the dark wind whispers through.

without consent

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Feminism, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on without consent

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

“I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.”
– Frida Kahlo

Translator of omens, chloroformer
of slurs, abductor of wickedness rare

and new; at Shaman’s Drum, in Ann Arbor,
not one poet posed naked, nightmare

of flesh, on their book covers. Perversion
was just a word. Strange eyebrows, broken shoe,

Blue House; you’re still naked, your alien
body, without consent, remains on view,

exposed, gets sold. Others make us monsters.
Others sell us. Others bring us back. You

ribbon around bomb. You jaguar. You grief
in sheets too thin to scab. Blasphemies, slurs,

omens; art keeps us in hell. Who knew
that ink damns painter just like knife damns thief?