Category Archives: sonnet

among alien gods

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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Anaba and the Quetzal

Anaba and the Quetzal

“sinaháse nagée nagée alíli kat
bïtása/ a’yeyeyeyahai`” Navajo
protection song.

At the other border crossing I shall
be stopped and so shall we all. “Now, slayer
of the alien gods am I.” Quetzal
sits in my left hand. The jaguar’s furor
stretches far flung over us. “Now among
alien gods with weapons of magic
am I.” Now all the jaguar’s furor, flung
far out, am I. Now the quetzal, homesick
and blue, am I. At the other border I
shall be stopped by alien gods, foolish
in all that they do and try to condemn.
We all cross, one way or anther, why
make this hard? I pray: go in peace: the wish
I give your gods before I destroy them.

myth and porn

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Just like a Disney princess, Pasiphae,
cuckold King Mino’s wife, kept a wild beast
as a lover. A white bull from the sea. One day
the queen had built a great wooden cow, greased
herself, lay waiting in its oak darkness,
primed. The world is full of lore of women
who train beasts “to perform the services
of men;” real stud fees; again and again.
Ovid’s tale of the Minotaur was not
just a warning, he aimed to titillate
with the details; how a mother begot
her son with a bull’s cock, fiend at the gate.
Once done Ovid leaves her, pregnant, forlorn;
proving there’s scant difference in myth and porn.

ghostly needs

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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If you can please a cat then you can please
a ghost, I believe. They’re so similar.
Cats. Ghosts. Sharks. Killers that love their bellies
scratched. I’ve touched shark snout, ghost skin and cat fur.
I could lie, tell you that I understood
what was under my hand. I could, perhaps.
Cats and ghosts both seek out love: that odd, good
human talent, but once they have it lapse
into indifference. Sharks are simply
curious and like to play. But knowing
that, I know nothing. I love mystery
but I can’t explain it. I can just sing.
Of cats’ ghostly needs, the kitten-like ghost
prowling, the shark’s soul that I love the most.

pat parker (1944-89)

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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author of woman slaughter

author of “woman slaughter”

Dear Pat: I miss you! There are time, alone
at night, when I hope that your ghostly scent
will fill the air. You’ll laugh, say how I’ve grown
and I’ll laugh too, and say how you haven’t.
I’ll ask you how Audre and Adrienne
are and you’ll say just fine. Then you will read
something new you have written and I’ll grin
and cheer at all the right parts. Death has freed
you from many things, but not from a warm
audience. Pat, I wait, this fey, whitest
of white boys, who loves you, loves to perform
your work; calls you superfine, the dearest.
You taught me the power of words, laughter,
respect and why I miss my big sister.

delfy gochez fernandez

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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Delfina Gochez Fernandez (1979)

Delfina Gochez Fernandez (1979)

If you never knew Delfi, that’s too bad.

See, I was talking with her yesterday.
She was teasing me, calling me “Comrade
Gringo,” due to my accent. Anyway,
we were catching up, the way old friends do
when they haven’t seen each other in years.

“When you die,” she said, “that era’s hairdo
will haunt you like a ghost.” Delfi still sneers
at the dictators of El Salvador.

She was murdered when I was only nine,

but that hasn’t slowed my friend down. “I said,
how can the living or the dead ignore
all our people’s troubles? There are divine
struggles that don’t stop just because you’re dead.”

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

after reading a poem about how monogamy is “the bourgeois prison”

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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“When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.”
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi
(tr. Coleman Barks)

* * *

It’s so hard to transform monogamy
into wild verse. It just sits in your mouth
like you have been gargling balls. Prissy
folk are all for it in the same way drought
loves its sunny days. This isn’t to say
polyandry is much better. In fact
it’s just the flip side of the coin; cliche
among radicals. But if you subtract
your damn ego — if you’re doing all this
for your Friends, your Others, your Shams — your verse
will be wild, child; no matter what your bliss
looks like. Do not turn love into a curse,
like those who try to define it. Freedom
looks like nothing I’ve found in your poem.

deathbed

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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Forgive me if I laugh, too, Grand Ma’ma.
You are so set in your ways, yet so wrong.
Look at me, I’m all rib bone and lockjaw.
But I know eternity isn’t long
enough for all that crazy love offers.
So what if your lovers were all bastards?
They’re not here. It’s your ego that whispers
in your ear. I lost mine with my innards.
Ego says you’re too old, too gray, too set
in your ways for love. I died at fifteen.
Age is so meaningless. I’ve made you wet
and sweat and scream out words that are obscene.
Nostalgia is meaningless to the dead.
Come back. Without love this a deathbed.

a response to enrique diez-canedo’s “la bruja joven”

04 Monday Feb 2013

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“al que a tu misterio de acercarse trata,
le halagas primero, después le rasguñas.”
— Enrique Diez-Canedo

For a certain type of man it’s easy
for him to transfer all his vast loathing
of girls and women into a story
about witches. Because he is living
in a world that does not value women,
he knows no one will challenge him when he
defames the craft. “You are foul;” “In the glen
you dance the Witches’ Sabbath;” “Devilry
is your love.” Really? I have a mother
and a sister and a witch lover, too.
Let me tell you, Enrique, you’re a liar
and an asshole. A man without a clue.
Get this: the only sin we have is hate;
that which makes us the devil’s advocate.

charlie lima india tango

04 Monday Feb 2013

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She was — how can I say this? — burned alive
out on Salem’s green for knowing too much.

She taught me the physics of the beehive,
honey’s craft, and I taught her where to touch
to find her [[Charlie, Lima, India,
Tango]]. She had come from a small convent
in Rome, modeled nude as a madonna.

I knew Mother Superior had sent
her to the New World. How the Puritans
found her, she doesn’t say. When I hold her
I get ash under my nails. But so what?

Love is love and she is randy, her nun’s
hymen not withstanding. This is our hour;
when life trumps death and our love runs riot.

sweet-bottom grass

04 Monday Feb 2013

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There is enough sweet bottom-grass around
this, your pleasant fountain, to keep me drunk

all day. Some eat to excess. I have drowned
in my own swampy needs, in others’ spunk,
as if cum were a rare commodity.

When I’m in collar and chains I will lick
it all up. When you show me your country
life, I delight in your porn and chronic.

I get grave stone in your sweet bottom-grass.
I stay down for days. But what sort of seed
does one need to plant where wild sassafras
grows wild on your clit? — all goo and honeyed.

There’s no seed. Just tongue up on the downstroke,
drowning, swallowing you until I choke.