Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Poetry

  • Ice Age


    In photographs


    The ladies scream or laugh


    It’s hard to tell.


    Heads back they bare their teeth


    In agonies of joy or rage


    Or grief; it’s hard to tell.


    All that remains of them


    Withered icons growing ever dim.


    Choosing’s painful; being chosen’s


    Worse. Some lop the juice


    First spurt and say that’s tastiest;


    Some hesitate forever


    As the vessel


    Guards its drops, fearing


    Time itself must have a stop.


    Our language reeks of stops and cuts;


    We have no other way to think –


    Like dancers frozen


    At the brink of freedom


    Paralyzed abreast the arc


    we cannot see


    what this design was meant to be.


    In that first winter


    When they thought the world was dead –


    Dogs cried; devils laughed.


    Crystal splintered up in shafts.


    We met in tents, a feathered


    Rendezvous


    Touched and yearned and


    Parley-voused


    Till you were me and


    I was you.


    Somewhere a fetus twists and jerks


    Assemblage of dynastic quirks.


    For kingdom come from nothing came.


    Our world is born


    To bleed again.

  • Cloverleaf


    Some roads lead nowhere;


    They’re my favorites.


    I held my breath while


    You drew my face in


    Blinding strokes and


    Creamed my mouth with curling lines


    Destroyed one picture; then another.


    Left at dawn while I


    Ran downstairs in circles, calling


    Raging, spending


    Nights without you,


    No blue thigh guards


    My sleeping heart while yours looks out


    To gauge the coming storm.


    Now I’m trapped in cloverleaves


    Sentenced to school figures


     By endless angry judges.


    Every face I paint is yours; balked by


     The enervating past


    Of unlived lives.


    Open up the chilly ruffles


    Of my breasts


    To beauty; yours and mine and your


    Strange spine’s;


     A body so much lighter


    Than the mountain that you loved


     The course you learned


    Much better than you learned me.


    Overconfident that


     you’ll come back


    I float across the powdered snow;


    In bird-winged silence


    all-enveloping


    Lost and frozen like my heart?

  • The Woeful Victory

    ELIZABETH SIDDAL; The Woeful Victory
     
    Be still.


    It is evening.


    I almost recognized you; who are you


    Fair one?


    Your mouth is stuffed with poppy hair;


    Fate lies coiled between your breasts


    Like a snake. But


    Your tongue’s torn out.


    You are the echo of my thoughts.


    (I am the motionless cradle.)


    Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.


    Will you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?


    My eyes are growing dim.


    (Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.)


    I shall paint you vermilion


    Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes


    Melt you foil & verdigris


    to the tune of Canterbury bells.


    Stay awhile, Fair one.


    I almost thought you spoke.


    (I am the face rising from the pool


    to drag the drinker deep.)


    I am not whole, dear lady.


    I am not myself.


    Who are You?


    (I am thyself. What hast thou done to me?)

  • Epithalanium

    Epithalamium

    The heat that rises


    From our marriage bed


    Powers up this house


    Summoning a cradle,


    Undercroft &


    Buttery;


    Colored jars of


    Seasoned fruit,


    Museums of ripeness


    Captured at the peak – just


    As we are –


    Citified –


    Reveling in


    Ownership;


    Mortgaging


    The future.

  • Haunted Wedding


    The pregnant car disgorges


    Only us. It’s winter.


    Drunk as silver fish


    We beat our gills as light


    As hummingbirds.


    In an amethyst ring


    Of drypoint trees


    The half-built house


    Gapes and swells


    Its timbers stink of sap.


    Windrill fields occlude


    Our crossing, so you carry me


    High above the thorny osiers.


    We sleep aloft for safety


    Locked and levitating


    In this space of air


    One season only,


    Unseen by angry outriders;


    Bloodless in our wedding robes


    Like the doubled membranes


    Of the frozen flowers.

  • A Light Upstairs

    SHIRLEY JACKSON: A Light Upstairs

    This house is empty


    Yet hardly unexplored –


    Something stirs aloft.


    The fat lady’s afraid because


    She cannot climb


    She sits and eats like a lonely child


    Celebrating birthdays


    A cat along each shoulder.


    She lifts her tarot card and listens


    Her own heart gasping in its womb of flesh.


    She fears cars and crowds and planes


    Elevators and department stores –


    Reads only stories where killers


    Are pursued, writes only tales


    Where innocents are stoned.


    It’s hereditary.


    The angry villagers once burned


    Her grandpa’s house.


    She smokes anyway, lighting repeat matches in


    An unsafe mansion where


    None escape alive.