... Laura A. Lionello
|
Homemaker Cave woman exterior, please pull me by my hair. I have forgotten about the use of my plump legs. ........................Take me to your dark place, lay me on your soft animal pelt. Lay me close to the dirt, in your filth, lay me. ........And I will slowly peel the smooth skin of your chest in layers of dry foliage. I will snap back your crisp twig ribs, bore a hole through your sternum and pour myself into the nestle of your aorta. I will make your heart my home. I will sweep to the rhythm of your pulse and dust to your lub-dub, create homemade dinners of your raw meat seasoned with your savory muscle and garnished with a sprig of your white blood cells. ................And when I'm lonely I will crawl through your largest artery to the fat vein on the left side of your neck that bulges like a snake digesting when you gulp. I will stretch long, my arms tickling your chin, my toes stroking your clavicle. I will let you swallow me whole slide me down the clean edge of your trachea, past the blonde hole in your breast bone and the messy weeds of your rib cage back to my little red cave. On the Island, Alone on the Edge of a Half-Mile Pier On the island this morning the lizards suck themselves to the stucco walls. Purblind little darlings, they don't peel just accept in stillness the thick wind dripping with knee-jerk anger while cauterized crabs head for the caves. Between Cayman Brac's salty breaths the palm trees stalk motionless as a child's choir, chameleon clouds change color to match the gray-faced palm of the sky, and two black birds with pterodactyl squawk circle over me on this balcony as the dark sea exhales a gross, monotone chant. It's just past hurricane season. Last night I saw the Southern Cross and now I'm watching a man alone on the edge of a half-mile pier look out past the blue like a sutra beyond the broken coral reef and tragic breakers with the urgency of the chronically fatigued. His red windbreaker marks him garish and crude, is a blight on all this mood. He cranes his neck and I know he's thinking out and down: surface to step, twenty feet; step, cliff to sea bed, four thousand feet. And at the bottom, there is only water. Through the grayish blue plain I gain courage- more angry than sad about it, mad girl, I want to tell him to let go or fuck off. I want to tell him that death in a poem doesn't have to be cliche' or, if it does, then add the search for sunken treasure add sophistication and sand castles add my heart talking to your heart add God. You know, I want to tell him, you could take care of all this for me. But I stay silent and he just stares beyond and beyond, his red jacket moving like flowing blood. Before the end of this, one of us will have to die. 'On the Island, Alone on the Edge of a Half-Mile Pier' originally published in 2003 Penumbra. Skinning the Girl The man on the street corner sells twitching orange blossoms in slight motions. His overcoat flaps with bravado, pleasantly announcing its womanless form. I walk past him then have to look back. By this time I was sure I had lost him in the move, was sure he'd had enough of this too. He'd been there with me chagrin over seasonal-ordered guilt under the table behind the chicken wire down the wishing well and then up again. And then all again. And that dry winter night when I slipped out from under his pin, flattened my belly on the cold dirt and crawled nearly two thousand miles west with only my exhausted spleen still churning, he let me go. Now I catch the brass knuckles of his eyes and he winks at me- one bruised pit, one blue promise. His smile is a saw-toothed refrain, his dimpled chin a turning vice. He wafts me into his embrace and the folds of his coat smell of grape hyacinth, the air is thicker in his space to contrast his concave gut, still silver promises gold and my eyes close. Then, like I'm being skinned, our bodies gleam and glaze apart- sandpaper scratch, my bread crust skin, stale scents, all sticking and skin. It feels like something could still be touching me. Main Page
|
