Anxiety
Worried the future
Stumbles
Over Now?
Chaos theory says
Surprise!
Category: #Poetry
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Impure Women
Between my breath and your breath
Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on
The volcanic dragstrip of my city
The wounded in the scorched earth policy
Of love
Muster, linger, await
Embodiment.
Pills to make their hearts race faster have
Stopped their faces dead as clocks
That witnessed crimes unspeakable
To mothers versed in tabloid gore.
Who will bring them
Absolution now that I am gone?
In the fresh wounds of a
Seconal summer
The stopped children meet
And kiss. -
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 lawnA real fixer-upper”.
Andreas never says what he thinks eitherBut 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 survivalCherishing passion
Rescuing me –
So I could grow up
And write this poem.
Alysse Aallyn 