Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Poetry

  • Sylvia Plath

    The Festering Weight :
     
    I know you deceived me with the bald-headed lady


    My true kin;


    My mother renounced


    Your swollen giblets in my name.


    See? I bleed tulips.


    It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth


    With children, little miracles.


    I give them their inheritance – a


      Carriage full of baby dung


    Flung


    Down the coal hole


    To remind me of you.


    Pearly maggots suck my lip


    Bee-like, to


    Scent the failure that clings to me:


    Heredity.


    This enemy’s face is shifting cleverly;


    First male, then jew, then


    blurred and unfamiliar genitalia


    like narcissi.


    I reserve the right to reject


    This choiceless life;


    My body’s scarred with


    Your refusals.


    The blackbird sings out


    Blackly.

  • Bed & Breakfast

    “That wing of course is closed”


    said Magda whose venomous green eyeshadow


    matched her voice;


    “I’d have that lanced if I were you”


    thinks Reni


    Who never says exactly what she thinks.


    “Wrong word:  wing”


    Thinks Andreas


    “to use about a house tethered toad-like to the lawn

    A real fixer-upper”.


    Andreas never says what he thinks either

    But he knows about fixer-uppers.


    It’s too late now.


    At dinner they quarrel about Ezra Pound;


    Pretending to agree.


    Squeaky bedsprings bastardize a sad romance;


    Hopeless beds mandate all sex standing up.


     This butler’s deaf and dumb,


    But knew the one way out:


    He was in for the tip of a lifetime.


    At breakfast the debate about Plath


    Turns violent; the danger


    Of murdering yourself with a kitchen appliance is


    They are everywhere.


    What a refreshing holiday, says Reni.


    We should do it more often says Andreas.


    Truth never spoken –


    Mission accomplished.

  • Christina Rossetti

    CHRISTINA ROSSETTI – The Garnered Blood

    The spinster sister lay in the library


    Throat engorged with pus


    Coughing and writing as


    The party raged around her


    She wrote of goblins and harebells and


    Withheld grace. She had


    Good reason to complain


    Of harsh treatment from her lover


    He who turned away his face


    No matter how she strove to please him.


    That was why she burned


    The story of the man who escaped


    His own reflection?


    “Suck me, eat me, love me”


    she wrote; yet He refused


    the smallest taste.


    How’s that fair when she


    Had eaten wheatfields of His flesh;


    Tasted oceans of His blood?


    “Thy will be done.”


    Face to the wall she died


    In fear of Hell; shriven but


    Unsavored.

  • Gothic Novel

    A woman alone is open, gaping like


    a button hole without a button hook.


    She carries her muff before her like an offering


    Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers


    slit the pause like razors.


    This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur.


    “I prefer the window up, thank you”


    “I prefer it down”


    She lights a Sobranie to remind her


    of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen


    lean forward, reading the initials


    on her morocco case.

  • Escaping

    Leaving the Coven

    A craven of cronies stood


    Between us & God


    God hated short skirts, God


    Demands clones.

    A damnation of judges


    Stood between us &


    Knowledge; truth exists


    Only in service to others.

    A clowder of cretins


    Stood between us &


    Art: “Don’t be disturbing”


    “Never trust instincts.”

    From the depths of


    This oubliette


    You drank the koolaid


    Guaranteeing your survival

    Cherishing passion


    Rescuing me –


    So I could grow up


    And write this poem.