Tag Archives: sonnet

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.

the receiver

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

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Be vast beyond the trees. Be transparent.
The dusk was good. You cavort. I am shy.

Give the sky a backward glance, whose crescent
eyes all these road-signs miss but don’t know why.

So what? – a phone will start ringing, humming
about the rain. Word! you say, the devil

will die – but not like this. There’s a graying
vapor, nameless, across the water; dull

with no words left. For how long will you go
without luggage, shoes, road-signs? You can see

through me. I love symbols, signs. Rise. Again,
press your face to mine under the sky. Glow.

Call me Morning Star. In the receiver
you can just hear a busy-sound, like rain.

sky without rain

03 Monday Nov 2014

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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.

yoked-nasty

01 Saturday Nov 2014

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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

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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.

new doorways

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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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

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“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?

goatish, dim soul

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

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[first a sacrifice]

Now cup your hands. Hold them out like begging
or prayer. In that space where your palms do not

touch think of something decaying, something
alive. Breathe in this goatish swamp air, what

others call “swamp pussy.” Now cup your hands.
Hold them out to implore, pray. All the rot

of your swamplands are burning. Your swamplands
on fire in your poor, cupped hands. You cannot

let go. I’ll pray for you and your goatish,
dim soul; a beast led to slaughter. Don’t hope

that the goat knows the end of the rope. Prayer
stops when the goat is pulled forward. I wish

I had never seen that. The knife, the rope
and the terrible motion in the air.