Tag Archives: poetry

June 4, 2013 · 6:15 am

the sword is a weapon of love, a poem

illustration sword is a weapon of love illustration sword is a weapon of love globe hand

The Sword is a Weapon of Love

(originally published in Stark Raving Sanity)

 

Brutal insight into a relationship occurs when the beloved

vomits in the bed… what can be borne, is, what cannot, dies.

Onslaughts of clarity come in the small hours like chest pains.

Can love survive endless trips to buy food?

 

Control your feelings — tie your hands together behind your back,

don’t pick up that stone.  Family is a genetic firestorm, shelter

yourself in a den carved out of solid rock.  Money is what creates evil.

A man I know lies whenever he can, if it will save a buck.

When you cannot decipher the callings of your heart

and soul, listen to loud music.

 

My grandmother left me a pair of silver goblets, which I

refuse to polish… I drank out of them on my wedding day —

they turned black instantly.  Beware of men

with black hair and dark eyes.  Beware of men who covet

objects of beauty, including you.  Their first

priority on the list of acquisitions is marriage.

 

When you have two opposing desires, do nothing.

Do first the one, then the other, if possible.

Take both paths simultaneously, and lie to everyone.

 

Beware of men who accuse you of interrupting.

If you fast for a day, you will experience quick and forceful change in your life.

The sword is a weapon of love. To be cut is to love deeply.

I know a man who hanged himself. His wife cut him down with his own sword.

 

In the bathroom, use lots of soap, feel emotionally cleansed.

Watch the moon, record it daily, change the color of your hair often.

Let the vines grow over the top of your roof, they will

penetrate your attic and a small wilderness will evolve over your head.

 

Always have a globe nearby to help you feel small.

Whenever you are embarrassed, take all your clothes off.

This will help you to remember what is really important.

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June 4, 2013 · 5:45 am

song of the hunted, a poem

Deer Runillustration song of the hunted
Song of the Hunted

(originally published in Stark Raving Sanity)

No, birds don’t worry where their next meal
comes from. Their food is everywhere, waiting
to be grabbed, devoured. Animals never fell

from the grace of simple equations, their wants
and desires are never tortured. Antelope hesitate
for a moment at the river, moist tender nostrils

sniffing the wind, but the decision to drink
is a snap compared with my dilemma. Lately,
I have gotten phone calls where the caller

hangs up without speaking. I feel fear, anger,
amusement. I know who wants my voice so badly.
He is one who won’t ever look you in the eye,

though he’ll eagerly brush against you;
a dog scenting for trouble. He is small,
high-voiced, chin delicate and unshaven.

I suppose I’ll try to keep a sense of humor
when he comes at me with the knife. Out walking
this morning, I saw him, and I almost let go

of self-protection — we approached one another
over the death-rumbling of heavy freight trucks;
long, thin sidewalk like an assembly line

pulling us together for completion, diesel exhaust
wafting through the damp air, making me dizzy
and ill. His face was immobile, stony,

looking through and past me at some ragged old image
of satisfaction I shall never discover.
As we passed side by side, I had the urge

to place my wrists together, hand over hand
in an oblique position of surrender. My ankles
had the impulse too, I wanted to dance the graceful

steps of guilty prey, I wanted to be bound
limb to limb with bloody rawhide, hung
from a thick green sapling, carried to the altar

of his mysterious desires. I imagined twirling
my limp, curving body through the air, falling,
falling at his feet in a posture of immaculate

serenity. I wanted ask: do you hate me
or do you love me? If he had answered
yes, twice, who on earth could blame him?

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June 2, 2013 · 11:33 am

on contemplating your death, a poem

illustration on contemplating your death illustration on contemplating your death brain image

ON CONTEMPLATING YOUR DEATH

 

(originally published in the Panhandler Magazine)

 

This is not heroism, this slow

nod to absolutes, numb acquiescence

to facts.  I perform the worst

 

sort of cowardice: cutting the lines

free before it’s over. I can feel

the steps away from you, the slow

 

casting off from love, the mournful

horns, departing from this foggy

land of illness.  When you didn’t

 

know me, when your hands danced

above the forgotten teacup, squeezing

a lemon primly into thin air,

 

you had a kind of ruddy stubbornness

I was shocked to see.  After that,

your pale and knowing return was

 

anticlimax.  You had gone another

way, in your blue cap, your skin hot,

glossy as if with fever, the surface

 

papery-soft but no longer familiar.

I hoped you were angry once more,

even as you slept.  I expected to

 

cry more, to feel something else,

to be more like you.  Nothing here

is how I imagined it, not this slow

 

nod to absolutes, not this languid

overflow of salt water — aching

bones, a past no longer claimed.

 

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June 1, 2013 · 4:13 am

the defenestration of prague, a poem

illustration of defenestration of prague 

The Defenestration of Prague

(originally published in Snakeskin)

When my father was six, the other children teased him,

calling him a dirty Bohunk. My grandfather promptly

changed the family name. By this he collaborated

 

with the enemy, he repudiated the family tradition.

Thus you don’t know how resistant we have been.

You have no idea of the damage we can cause.

 

Sure, we look like anybody else, but those children

sensed something amiss. I myself want to throw

people out the window all the time, even after I know

 

they don’t deserve it. I come from a long line

of defenestrators. We take our frustrations seriously,

we live for the dark moments of the soul, we are the truly

 

evil people, we upset the apple cart time and time again.

Our closest neighbors have always hated us. Thanks to

Grandpapa, I can pass for educated, empowered, lucky.

 

I have respect for the less fortunate because they have

respect for me. However misguided, they know precisely

when to ask for favors, they never ask too much.

 

Back home in Prague, 17th century, only the priests were

allowed to drink the blood of Christ. The children never knew

why the grownups were so upset. The children didn’t care

 

about the bread and the wine, they didn’t know how

they were being insulted, they didn’t know they were being

treated like children, all they wanted was to be talked to,

 

played with, tickled under the chin. They only wanted to eat

bread and chocolate, get nuts and oranges every Christmas.

But my ancestor Greguska Pomikala threw two Habsburg

 

representatives out a third story window, unwittingly setting

off the Thirty Years’ War. He was frustrated when he threw

them over the wide marble sill — so cold as his fingers

 

pried their fingers off. He took nothing with a grain of salt.

I am familiar with how he felt at the victims’ moment of takeoff.

Sometimes I wish I’d followed in his footsteps. He felt

 

as if he’d married the most beautiful woman in the world

only to be told, You can’t touch her. Greguska wanted to drink

the wine, too. He wasn’t happy being given bread alone.

 

Neither am I. I am taking back the family name, the family

traditions. Don’t ever cross me and expect to stand

alone, with me, in a room with windows.

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May 31, 2013 · 11:39 am

chin pu (mimetic consumption), a poem

chin pu mimetic consumption duck stretching on rock

Chin Pu  (Mimetic Consumption)
 
(originally published in Blue Fifth Review)
 
The duck on her rock performs a slow dance,
stretching leg and wing she could be flying
but her eyes are steady upon mine.  If I eat

her will I possess her grace?  If I dry her bones,
pound them to powder will I ever be able to fly?
China being the oldest civilization, wouldn’t you think

there is truth in this idea?  Snake blood is the cheapest
aphrodisiac — the glossy firmness of the snake around
my arm makes me remember every time I’ve been

touched.  Panicked by my lust, the snake twists
and defecates, a runny yellow soup emerging
from a shocking red anus which for a moment

seems like blood.  Yet the snake’s eyes never
flinch from mine.  If I roast this body on a wood fire,
will I too be able to penetrate the entire world

with my stare?  Emotions come from an older place
than thoughts — the duck, the snake and I share
more than breath, more than mere life.  We feel,

therefore we are.  It’s not so easy with people.
Even if it weren’t forbidden, could I process
your body for consumption? Could I use all your parts,

not waste a drop?  Aren’t we all waiting to be eaten?
Somewhere, those I love would season me with care,
value my flesh for the qualities they’ve learned to see —

not grace, not smooth strength, but constant
restless longing, the mind completely open,
forever curious.  Don’t hesitate — swallow me whole.

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May 30, 2013 · 5:21 pm

the conductress of milk, a poem

Image

(originally published in Stirring:  A Literary Collection)

 

The Conductress of Milk

 

I am a conduit, pure liquid medium. 

It is like bleeding, I prostrate myself

to her lips, lay low while she sends

eloquent messages with her tiny, velvety hands,

 

her eyes dreaming, smiling.  At 3 a.m.

she has the strength of a legend. 

She grasps her own thumbs tightly

while she sucks on me.  There is pain,

 

but not too much.  I hew roads

through this darkness, telling her how one day

we will visit Paris, leaning over the old

sandstone edge of my favorite bridge

 

across the Seine.  The passage exhausts,

yet chronicles how time can stand still,

how the illusion of eternity creates its own value. 

I feel like an impostor — only the fact I’m lactating

 

convinces me I’m her mother.  How quickly

she goes from one emotional state to the next —

she can be fussing one second and smiling

to herself the next.  The silkiness of her cheek,

 

slick with spilt milk, is like angelwings.

She kicks her legs out straight while nursing,

moves her hands and arms like Leonard Bernstein

conducting — she moves her head for emphasis,

 

sometimes pulling back on the breast,

stretching the nipple.  She smacks her lips,

then pops off and lets go.

She looks up at me, wide-eyed, but soon

 

drops off into a very pleasant looking

milk-sucking stupor, a milky drunkenness,

a milk-sucking intoxication.  No wonder

we all ache for drugs afterward.

 

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May 30, 2013 · 3:48 am

knitting with dog hair, a poem

Knitting with Dog Hair

Image

 A novice at spinning, I pump

with feet cramping in the arches,

toes splayed within stained

suede sandals, wisps of fur

 

tearing off, floating through air

made hot, heavy, hard to breathe;

the spindle twitters under my hand

like a dangerous bird; my nose itches

 

inside; I remember your skin

as I saw it long ago, covered

with a curled, golden down

fine enough to make a baby’s

 

first blanket.  I took this

hobby up as cheap therapy;

combing the dog, rubbing his pink

belly in reward, watching his

 

grateful ears rise, then fall…

Soon I will complete my first

garment — draped gracefully

over the shoulders, gathered

 

at the waist, droopy bell sleeves

in the madrigal fashion.  I shall

strut clothed this way, down your

street, to knock at your door —

 

wanting more, I know, than you

could ever give.  Smart, witty,

you are never at a loss for words,

except when faced with my designs.

 

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May 30, 2013 · 3:41 am

belladonna (atropa belladonna), a poem

Belladonna (Atropa belladonna)Image

(originally published in Poetry SuperHighway)

 

Italians have known since the beginning

how I can make a woman beautiful —

it’s all in the eyes, they must be receptive,

 

or impenetrable, they must soothe,

or provoke, they must be wide with innocence,

or with knowledge.  People feel like nothing

 

unless observed seriously,

by a woman with eyes like black stars;

everyone knows the way children call

 

Watch me, lady, See what I can do! 

That is why those seeking beauty

dilate their pupils with my sap… 

 

I was also named for Atropos,

the Fate who severs the thread of life. 

I sever men’s hearts, I am that beautiful lady,

 

I am atropine — I am stinging red

juice used for the dilating effect. 

When I so desire, I flower singly or in pairs,

 

nodding, my corolla blue-purple or dull red,

according to my mood, or the soil I twine

my pale roots in.  So who do you think you are,

 

holding back a polite cough?  Deep down, you know

you fell the second I looked at you, seeing right through

your clothes to the naked body you hold so dear.

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