Strawberries

There’s been a mistake.
You didn’t expect this glitch.
This vanishing point
of a private murmuring city.
This fumbling
in a void of spreading
formlessness
(they told you it would
be a flower, not a slit).
Greedy mouth,
how many fingers
can you swallow?

In the movies, you would
unzip her out of her dress
and she is sexy alabaster,
leaning against the stairs,
a sell-out pimping her nipples,
readying them for your touch.
In real life, she is tired
of the metaphors – earth
and mother and whatnot.
In real life, ecstasy is far
from pretty, a groaning sickness
spasming on the carpet.

You are quickly learning
about the revolution that
brews beneath her flesh -
a whispered language of
rite and ferocity and the
invisible mountain she carries.
That to sleep,
you must lock away
your inheritance.
To emerge,
a world must unlearn itself,
then flood, then burn.

When the twitching stops,
you uncork her
(of course, she is
a bottle of wine to you)
and pour out the paraffin
from her mangled bones.
Flickering tongues
from hell lick the salt
off her thighs.
No pain felt she.
Burn’d like one burning
flame together.

You went looking for strawberries,
instead you found the manic whore,
the universe’s relentless core.

Two poems

Trisha Verma

The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz

Tonight, there’s been a burial.

A careless hammering of nails into a dry casket –
by men drunk on moonshine – breaks the night,
scattering the weevils and owls into the rising moon.
They’ve taken my words, my amour, my knife and
left me here to fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.

This cross I bear, is mine to carry for they’ve been
afraid too long – these men drunk on moonshine.
Afraid, when they peeked into my tent to watch
me put on my girdle, gather my bow and arrow
and swing the pelta around my one breast. Afraid,
ever since I rode through the wild crags of Pontus,
kicking up the dust to leave them momentarily blinded.

Tonight, there’s been a burial.

The stars die and I have a night to call my own. The
casket hits the ground and earth pounds hard on its shell.
Darkness smooths out my ragged breath. I remember
Deborah’s Song and hum the tune. Soon the raging
desert winds that once muffled the cries of Sisera
will fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.

***

the hours i keep

i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain last night
that it didn’t lash out
on the roof
that it didn’t soak the
clothes on the line
that it didn’t rouse me
from my sleep
i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain

i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today
hidden in the half light
waiting to be
put down on paper
that they don’t
rhyme and punctuate
to draw us in
or leave us out
i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today

i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning
that it’s not lapping
against a gold rim
that it will not steam
my glasses
that it will now goad me
out from my bed
i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning

i’ll pretend i don’t
know where you live
or what you do
that you like walnuts
and your sky grey
that sometimes you don’t
listen to things
i have to say
i’ll pretend i don’t
know anything about you

i’ll pretend there wont
be any more of this –
rain, teas, stories, verses and walnuts –
that they don’t fill up my hours
that they don’t pack up my days
in neat little
cardboard boxes
till they leave me in a silent catacomb
i’ll pretend there won’t
be any more of this

***

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