June 2013

Monthly Archive

poem24 Jun 2013 08:00 am

Solstice by Sandi Leibowitz

“It’s Midsummer night,”
I whisper to you, already asleep;
“if we make love, I’ll conceive
a divine child.

“She will babble a bard’s wisdom,
he will lullaby the darkness down.
Enter me, and enter summer’s kingdom,
let me thaw your winter heart.”

You protest by shielding
your eyes with your hands.
You don’t waken,
won’t turn to my sun.

I am no fire of bones
startling the wheat to life,
inspiring the poppies’ bloom,
no blazing brand that ignites the green.

But as I undress, a moth encircles me,
travels the briars of my hair,
batters itself against my skin
as if I were a flame.

Large_bonfire

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poem10 Jun 2013 08:00 am

Bear Child by Alexa Seidel

 

I was born an orphan
a wild and savage tiny thing
and you caught me looking up
hunger making my eyes wide

You took pity on me, Ursa Major,
Big Bear,
nursed me with the warm
cream of your stars, wrapped
your shining paws around me
and licked me clean
with your comet tail tongue

Mother Bear
you have given me the skies
and the night stars
glimmering like fireflies
and I am grown now, feel
the planet beneath me
but earth and rock
are not the hunting grounds you showed me,
are not the wilderness
you bequeathed on me

Mother Bear
I am your wild child
my lips already parted
for the chase
of comets, planets’ rings,
clouds of dust
and maybe somewhere in the black
I’ll find something living wild and savage
as did I

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poem03 Jun 2013 08:00 am

Beauty Remembers, by Sara Norja

Beauty Remembers

I.

Kindling to anger
like August wood,
your mountain-storm voice
drained and drowned me –

Yes. I’ll admit
I was afraid, at first,
when they brought me
to your house.

II.

Your love of the roses
puzzled me. They never suffered
from your whims, unlike the servants.
I watched you tend them
with gentle claws.
I imagined that touch
on my flesh,

and shivered.

III.

Books I had aplenty,
more than merchant’s daughters
would see in a lifetime.
I ate them up, hungry
for past knowledge and poems.
My fingers grew rough
from the jagged page-edges.

Once I cut myself deep
on The Anatomy of Melancholy
when you prowled the library.
Sucking my finger
till my mouth was iron,
I saw you watch, eyes afire.

And I knew: you, too, were hungry.

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