Category Archives: sonnet

and then that happened

06 Monday Apr 2015

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I yawn. I wake. I walk about bandy
legged without you staring at my scarred-up

leg or the tiger-stripes on my belly.
The crows bring hashish, vervain and julep

root to my window. The ants bring badger’s
foot. It’s good to be alone. All the toys

are put away. The urge to peg strangers
has dulled. I’ve wiped the lipstick off. This bruise

will fade in spring-light; so will all this tensed
rage. I don’t need sap to run with mischief

in my head. I’ve sharpened all the kitchen
knives. The shadows rub their muzzles against

my palm. I’m so full of myself; enough
to know I’m both antidote and toxin.

scars without flinching

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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“Ugly,” is what you would call me, if you
were to call me anything. I have one

who can touch the scars without flinching. True,
“I am lucky;” what they tell the burden

so it will stop feeling like one. Sometimes
I want you to see what I look naked.

Mostly I don’t. It’s not like the right rhyme
will make the world love me, or that my blood,

once spilled, would raise a Cain. Of all the shocks
that’s the worse. That all my fears get condensed

to this: I could go out, full of desire
through the rain, with crickets clinging to stalks;

through wind, with seas of Queen Anne’s Lace against
my knees; and I would still drown in such fire.

you see the merchandise

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Carve me a toothpick; I have one curled hair
stuck in-between my incisors. These chapped

hips, this silicon knob with its horsehair
tail, these boots. Have I ridden you? or “tapped

your ass,” as Butch Lisette once claimed? Of course
not. Please forgive my friends, they are … so young,

obsessed with sending nude selfies. They’re coarse
little things, amusements. But you? Your tongue

itches to taste this, no? Peace. Come closely.
Pull up your trousers. Look out the window.

Be still, pet. What do you see? The merchandise
of lust; the night hums with it. But for me

I’m done with stroking needy libidos.
That’s how much I adore you: more than vice.

cuts you up

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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[I have] [no] [words for] [this flesh I] [just wish]
[the whole] [world was flooded] [hip] [deep I do]

[fear] [that] [I’ll wake] [under water that] [squish]
[sound when] [I move my] [thighs, some] [membrane-goo]

[that I] [can’t pull] [off; Venus] [in the sky]
[There should be a] [photo] [I’d share my] [rude]

[crotch, my wiry hair] [my scars my] [marked] [thigh]
[I love] [my] [thigh but there] [isn’t. Rough-hewed]

[flesh is not] [fit for such] [things I love] [how]
[both] [legs look under] [water, yet] [water]

[floods in] [when I] [open] [my mouth] [Venus]
[if you would just] [possess me] [once more] [Now]

[liquid] [laps. My] [limbs curl] [in] [I’m the] [slur]
[without words] [What] [Burroughs called the virus]

check your tongue

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Feminism, Poetry, sonnet

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Of my three aunts, Sylvia, Adrienne
and Anne, two killed themselves and one refused

to look at me. I’ve loved them. I’ve loved gin,
static-buzz, bone-fever — all that confused

their words with being something more. “Nomen
est omen:” call me, “Left Behind.” Call her:

“Matertera.” Without these three women
what am I? Check your tongue about that slur

that I’ve broken my pact made between gods
and their dire verse; as if either pleased.

Tonight I want an aunt’s voice that marauds
through my skull, that translates all that buzzed

into something. Confessions. I love them.
I love their words. Their so-called hate and sin.

omit

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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“Suckle my flesh.” There should be more, of course,
something about, “your kisses on my clit,”

“your two fingers inside,” and “my voice, hoarse,
urgent,” “my flesh sweating, flushed.” I omit

the rest because this isn’t about that.
Somewhere a girl sleeps on flagstones, under

thatch-roof and dry-stone walls. A witch’s brat
who knows nothing about lust, that other

magic. No, not even that. So, what then?
Quote from the Torah, Bible or Koran

about female nature being sinful?
Hell no! We go down to the beach, again,

naked breasts wearing shadows of a tan,
watching waves rush in and out like a bull.

rifts

21 Saturday Mar 2015

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Come, love. We don’t bring them into focus,
or cast shadows upon the dim water,

or rouse them out to talk. No, no. For us
it’s about patience; when the gray weather

becomes neither sea nor sky, when the birds
hide in the drab grass sands, when the wind shifts

so that glacial waves are lulled by the words
that we both must speak. I’ve charted the rifts

between our two worlds. I’ve drunk from their cup.
I’ve made us a pact; because I love them.

It’s OK to be frightened, downcast and glum.
I was. We all will be. Yes, it’s fucked up.

Yes, I’d rather not, but … even mayhem
can’t save us. The rifts open. Come, love, come.

rootless

23 Monday Feb 2015

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“take me to the poppy field, I asked my/ lover”
— — ofsoliloquies

[S]ister stalk the root taken from my jaw,
flowers keel over, the hothouse frame cracks

and curve. What you give I cannot name, gnaw,
wake or smoke your bouquets down to their flax

and heart. At the water’s edge I’m earthbound
but there — — “circles kissing water” — — spirit

troubling surface. Your words the good wound,
the wind that drags my hoop skirt and corset

from me. Point toward whiskey benediction,
up to the neck. Fill my jaw-hole, waiting

for the holy holy. Press nerve, milky
weed, cracked lips, reluctant waves suck crimson

down what you give rootless I blow letting
me name troubled waters holy holy

strange octave

16 Monday Feb 2015

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“A bra, a bra for all/ sizes” – May Wong,
a bad girl’s book of animals (1969)

Pity the mermaid, she knows nothing about
cunnilingus. Underwear baffles her.

I’d give up my fins, too, to lick that doubt.
To taste what the other side enjoys. Her

body comes out of the sea at dusk, crawls
through the grasses. There are no runaways.

No one gets to swim free. On the stonewall
of the beach – a house; its alien ways

will vex her. Even the shamans among
her kind can only sing about night skies.

We hope a queer stanza, a strange octave
will lead to wonders, to songs that our tongues

forgot. As if it’s language that denies
us all this, and not us denying love.

shoulder deep (these damning words)

03 Tuesday Feb 2015

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Shoulder deep in the ocean at sunrise —-
night, stars, fish slid around me, my hair swirled

behind. This point in the sand horrifies
me, this point where the tide pulls and the world

wonders if I’ll return to shore or let
myself be dragged forward. There are spirits

in the deep that are hungry for touch, wet
like me in the surf, who know the secrets

of how to survive under such pressure
but have no wish to survive. If only

there was a third option; neither forward
nor back; something to calm this sex-fever.

Brain sick, I cannot choose the land, the sea,
madness, love, silence or these damning words.