Tag Archives: sonnet

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

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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

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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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.

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.