Poetry

Pasiphae

(Published in Avalon Literary Magazine)

Orbit of pupils lined with the white-color of the bull lain with Pasiphaë,

O, great nymph’d goddess, pacify

When in the fire, hung with cactus, I, am strict as the ridges on the lining of the oven

Go upstairs to the kitchen, and fetch me some heaven

You’ll know it when you see it,

Pitted, with a mauve blood around the edge

In what capacity, Pasiphaë,

Do we pacify, and crucify-

Call me ill, if illness is rescued appetite

Too ill to make the journey up the oven ridges that parade as house stairs

Wooden- like the nose of the lie you’ve told

That Appalachian trek of dishonest saccharine naivety

You said you want me up the stairs and in the kitchen, to find heaven

But Pasiphaë, do not will yourself to wait

Fuck the white bull and find your heaven in the meat of the kitchen

While I quote Homer in the basement

All I ask is you scrap the act of innocent betrayal once you’re down

Eat the animal and kiss the stove when you finish

I wish I could make you know how I feel about you

I could have my way with you, your acceptances, cram undulating undesirable novelettes down your throat till you can be so aware

It is more than any sentence of desire that you could skillfully skip up into meringue- bite sized, fog shaped- but i concede to your simplicity of ‘want’ and ‘like’

We want, we like

I want, you like

You want, i like

We trot ahead

And whisper our likes and wants

And you step up to the kitchen to find me a bit of heaven

And instead you find a horned son of Pasiphaë, pacify

You choose truth where he sees no such quandary

This is objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts

Just because you are no daughter, does not make you a son

You are what you eat

You can be heaven, or you could be meat.

Spring's Blinding Lip

Spring’s blinding lip

Dalit’s skin

I wear

Spring

I shed

Overflow of ovarian blood

In the season of mate and nest

Blinded by the rise of the moon

While the sky still lurks blue

And the clouds all look like you

Coined, impregnated

Brain of the weak heel

Brawn of the Odyssey

Everything cratered where it should bulge

One eye shines

One lip blinds

I never got curtains

If the glass stains, that’s enough

Introduced my mermaid to your manhood

And neither understood the other

The swan breathes river and spits out air

I can be river, I can spit air

Love illiterates no spring, no fall, or snow

Dalit’s skin never sheds,

Once on

Not even for you,

My swan

Shape Of A Shell

I wonder if that’ll be me one day

Holding the sea to my ear

In the shape of a shell

Holding your picture to my chest

Curled up

The shape of a shell

Spiraling, we notice we are

Cassandra

(Published in Avalon Literary Magazine)

I want to live in someone’s shadow.

I want to be touched like a fire in the winter forest, like a dry tree by a flame, like a spark and a wire.

Vanilla bean, dusty moonbeam romances are far too common and somehow completely unseen by me

I’m a follower. And brainless.

By connection of Earth to fingers, yes! I might think on occasion and feel a sexual urge to write my borings down rather explicitly so that they are tangible.

But they are not!

My exploits are of the imaginative nature!

They are as real to me as the Barnum mermaid or as real as future. Wavy and foggy, unclear, watered down in light of true realities. Past and present.

Yes, I do still want to live in someone’s shadow. But I’m much too grown up and potbellied to fit into someone else’s narrow sidewalk silhouette.

I am, as the man I fell in love with on an airplane once said to me, jaded.

‘Jaded early’, I believe, is what he called me, so casually.

So yes, I may clutch the idea of living in someone’s shadow with my palms until my nails grimace in misunderstanding.

But I don’t have that luxury of being the kind of lover people want to stuff in their pockets!

So instead, I turn all the lights in my bedroom out completely, and I wait for the spots on the wall to move

I count them like little lambs and circus ladies with small wetsuits on

There is a thin outline of teal light tracing from inside the bathroom door, and heaven could be waiting for me on the other side

So I flip the other way

And pretend I didn’t see

Never do I remember drifting off to sleep