Category Archives: sonnet

requin

18 Friday Dec 2020

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Far-off wave, depraved. Nali leans over

the edge of the dugout, shakes her rattle.

 

She calls: “Big Sister let my Small Sister

come to me.” She does: out from the coral

 

shadows a shadow rising, a shadow

vast, vast as the tide’s rip, twisting current,

 

rising into song. I was there. I know

you don’t think women can do this. Pregnant

 

ghosts will scorn you for that. They love Nali,

though. I rowed. She sang and Femme de requin

 

came to have her snout rubbed, to feast on prayer.

Sisters swam here until men trawled this sea

 

down to its ghosts. The price of a shark fin

is when you call and only ghosts answer.

][][

Notes:

Femme de requin is French for shark woman. The inspiration of this poem came from watching Dennis O’Rourke’s 1982 documentary, The Sharkcallers of Kontu.

flares

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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She was dead and encased her exquisite

curves in the sort of sequin disco-flares

 

called posh before I was born. Her velvet

tube top bled. Her long cadaverous hair

 

couldn’t hide the hole where the girder

had punched clear through. “Let’s do lascivious

 

things,” she’d said, rising. It’s hard. We linger,

hoping for love. The living see darkness

 

in sex and quail. The dead are beyond doubt

now that it’s too late. Randy ghost of ghastly

 

flares, you have spawned unease. If lusting for

dead things is freakish then let me freakout,

 

old-school style, with kisses, with sodomy.

Fuck’s crux. Putting the core back in hardcore.

fettered

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Night frosts. Fettered gales. Sauna sun rise. Steam

fit for queens and concubines. After school

 

you came, brought her with talk of romps, extreme

and droll. “Not in her rump,” was your one rule

 

as I slipped out of you. “Only in mine.”

All day the sauna’s pine walls soaked up heat.

 

When you two arrived, frigid as frost’s shine,

we puffed and passed, shucking off our clothes. Cheat

 

ice-sleet like this. Mellow lay, they say. Stoned,

you laughed when she impaled herself. I laughed

 

when you kissed the spot where the two of us

joined. She laughed and came. Others have condoned

 

this. Meh. You asked to learn my queer witchcraft;

craft built from libertines and the Goddess.

dwindling

11 Friday Dec 2020

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There’s my Bayou shark, requiem, nimble

through swamp and misty fen. I’ve seen her twist,

 

turn and sashay away. A wolfish girdle

flitting through cypress bogs. When frost and mist

 

cake this lake, though, I can find no old souls;

just ice flows and shadows. I got conjure

 

and shine but as this wintertide gale rolls

through mud and bone I find my warm water

 

guide is blind. She cannot find me. Iced lakes.

Sightless seers. Gods fade in this pallid

 

polar light. Dwindling surf’s boom. What can

a shark haunting the Gulf know of frost’s ache?

 

Nothing good throbs under my closed eyelids

since words make a poet, gods a shaman.

nor’eastern

07 Monday Dec 2020

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It’s gray outside. Gray inside me. A thought

full of dripping clouds. Dingy to boot. Dim

sway. Dim tumult. Trifling waves that trot

along the lake shore. Shades too cold to swim

in. All my life I’ve fled winter drizzle’s

bliss. Now, even in my sick bed, I spurn

those vast rains from Canada. These crackles

in my lungs are just like a “Nor’eastern” ––

all foam, blood and drift, sundering pain.

In my sick bed I hear the ‘plash spume hiss

each time I breathe in. In my sick bed you

ask how it goes? Listen. That’s frosted rain

in my breath. Once I could’ve weathered this.

This time there’s no safe harbor to flee to.

][][

Note:

I live near the shores of Lake Michigan. Cyclones out on the north Atlantic are called Nor’easterns. It’s a fitting term to use here too, though there is a difference. Because the lake is so shallow (compared to the ocean) any winter storm coming down from Canada almost always turn extreme, generating riptides, huge waves and freezing temperatures. Often the danger for sailors is not drowning out on the lake but freezing to death.

zigga

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by in A Girl and Her Submarine, Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Hit it hard. A simple request. First time?

Charging batteries at night off the Great

 

Thatch. We were both filthy with diesel grime,

crude oil, acid flashbacks. We had to wait.

 

We sat up top. We passed the zigga back

and fro; enthralled with each Uncanny Queen –

 

Sappho’s term for starlight. Waves made low thwack

-lap noise in the dark. You made low obscene

 

noise, too. Smut puppet. Slush galore. A tongue

curling you up. Translucent trails all glow

 

in the waves. Surge dripped from your thighs. Hit it

hard. You clung to the sub’s drunk hull. I clung

 

to your soused conch. Writhing wraiths. Purge and blow

while Saint Elmo’s Fire played across your clit.

][][

Notes:

It would be grand to run away to sea in a submarine built for two (plus cats). Great Thatch is a derelict of an island, part of the British Virgins in the Caribbean. It’s named after Edward Teach (the pirate called Blackbeard). St. Elmo’s Fire appears as blue lightning, all squirm-dazzle in the rigging of tall masted ships, heralding an approaching storm.

fathoms

26 Thursday Nov 2020

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Build me an underwater boat a crew

of two might handle. I’ll be your gray god

 

among waves. Dreams of drowning, of rescue,

of shear waters. The same ghost shark that’s gnawed

 

on you gnawed me, I see. From a strange wave

we both were born. From the shark that chants, shark

 

that mourns. Build for me the boat that I crave.

To slip through seas. To plunge into the dark.

 

To sink. To descend. Crushing depths do not

frighten me. — Only being lost from you does.

 

Only a life spent on land. We: sea. We:

brine. Come: be mine. A crew of two. We’re what

 

ghost sharks dream of. All that spumes. All that sluices.

All that fathoms. Love deep as the high sea.

làn-mara

23 Monday Nov 2020

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We’ve both seen seals bobbing on the ocean.

Any witchin’ that drowns sailors, cracks ships,

 

is good. Any tongue that makes, “làn-mara,” run

a gift. “There’s a harbor between your hips,”

 

Ma said. High tide runs fast there when your seal

wakes from dreaming. We’ve both heard selkies talk,

 

those gray women bound to men who steal

their skins. Our magic runs different: with cock

 

and cunt, with moon and tide, with your harbor

gushing. “Don’t tell Ma,” you said. “Don’t

 

stop.” I’ve drowned before. Your fat waves break

on my chin. The rim of your flooding shore.

 

The fog-lost lip of your cunt’s brim. I won’t

stop. Our witchin’ of the sea. Our sea’s ache.

][][

Notes:

Folklore from the Northern Isles of Scotland talk of the selkie, the seal folk, who are able to pass as human by shedding their seal skin. Unfortunately the selkie are also in the habit of forgetting to hide the one thing that gives mortals power over them so there are many fairy tales in which some complete failure embodying the worst aspects of manhood brings home a seal wife who spends all her time begging to be released and pining for the sea. In Scot-Gaelic, “làn-mara,” is the term for high tide.

newfoundland

19 Thursday Nov 2020

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Don’t mind snow, you know. If it’s for a good

cause. If it’s falling on our snug cottage

 

perched on a ridge; if there’s auks and driftwood

strewn on the beach below. My sea village

 

slang needs work, but when “the morbs” come, all bleak

and glum, then I’ll “batty fang” through crusting

 

tide pool slush. I was made for fleecy chic

sweaters, flip caps, “tempest nanty narking.”

 

I, too, shall sing up a “mafficking” storm.

Squall songs that my sea hag sisters shall hurl

 

back. There’s more here than just hoarfrost and snow,

you know. I’ll sing them to you over warm

 

mugs of tea, cats on our laps, the whole world

ahoo outside our welcoming window.

][][

NOTES:

In Victorian British slang, “the morbs,” means being depressed or sad. “Batty fang,” “natty narking,” and “mafficking,” are all 1880 terms for causing a rowdy (and usually drunken) disturbance while out in public. In nautical slang, when something has gone, “all ahoo,” it means things are disordered or chaotic.

fluttered

15 Sunday Nov 2020

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Now your soul returns. Consciousness seeps in

around the edges. Blink. Look down between

 

your splayed thighs to watch me watching you. Grin.

Blush a touch. When you said: “Make it obscene.”

 

When you said: “Are you still my big sister’s?”

I paused, poised over your plump swelling,

 

measured not in single centimeters

but in intensity, encompassing

 

everything, nestled soft, held safe by fat

baby phat lips. “I was but now I am yours.”

 

I’ve changed allegiances like that before.

Once she fluttered awake, too. “Horny brat,”

 

she called you. “Mine.” Go blind as the world roars

back in you, my lips tongue-smacking your core.