Verse & Photography by Kay Kennett
I like how you spend your time
breathing—
into your pelvic fire,
to help signal a feeling of release,
balancing contentment with desire,
because it is necessary for holiness.
I like how you spend your time
eating—
what makes you pucker:
green tea, Montmorency cherries;
steeling yourself for loose hunger,
and for whomever says: Yes, please.
Never is honey as raw
as its origin flower,
at the moment of dehiscence,
giving in to the release
of seeds, pollen, and the quiet
that comes after —
the spontaneous opening
along a single crack
of built-in weakness,
where the wound fails to heal.
Mark how the wisteria behaves,
dripping from a ceiling
in the 1900 block
of NE Schuyler Street;
how its winglike petals
The sun had come down, but not out.
It was the bulb of a projector, casting
cool, blue light from its core; except for
lacking an electrical cord.
Where did the heat come from—
that changed the surface of the moon
from swiss cheese to a flat screen,
capable of displaying our vitals?
A reddish tinge across your cheeks
told the answer. It was 100 degrees,
and counting down from the minute
you walked up, and I could imagine
the peak.
We were sitting close to each other,
under the pretenses of just wanting
to share a large popcorn and soda.
You hadn’t had sugar in six weeks.
An hour after it happened, I joked:
“The vision of you undoing my laces
may be my undoing. Oh, so delicately,
your fingers untwined the knots.”
Now, several days after it happened,
I have exhausted the limit of images
on the “beauty of tight binding,”
pretending an interest in macramé.
I have laid the first and only move
in single player Cat’s Cradle,
betting on you to pinch my Xs
into the Jacob’s Ladder.
So, what do you say? Let’s play
until the sun comes down,
and the afterglow fades, or at least
until we have run out of shapes.
With luck, perhaps, thereafter.
Thinking about how
sex is different, much more
different, now than it was then;
not materially — the strings still
bray, their ancient tongues still
flick the same — but structurally.
Thinking about how
to imagine being fucked from
behind, without gagging on a
principle: all sex is violence
except the kind that is saved
by a word; Mississippi means
“This doesn’t feel good to me.”
Thinking about how
this doesn’t feel good to me;
the mattress has a zipper that
rubs wrongly, reminding me
of a mouth too familiar that
is dry and uncertainly mine.
Thinking about how
often is not often enough
for someone* to masturbate
when someone is *a female.
Thinking about how
being female is a diagnosis
for dysfunction; how I come
and come and come to accept
that prescription for Prozac
in place of understanding.
Thinking about how
the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts, i.e., ❤ = you + me
or 1 + 1 = 3; how there’s no proof
that when two losers fall in love
they’ve the will to beat anything.
Thinking about how
you beat me once, and again,
not materially — but an injury
does not have to be physical
to get us thinking about how
the body works or does not.
There’s a rat-a-tat-tat on the window
that my imagination takes for bird’s
play — swallow — and then I see her
dancing, with her twin in the glass,
damn narcissist, she’s asking for it,
go splat
at my feet. No feathers?
There’s a feet, or two, or
a pair of Converse shoes
faded that familiar blue-
like lavender but not so sweet-
smelling as bodies do when hot
so hot so fucking hot are you
here on some errand? Here, winner
take all that’s left of my peach.
Pat of butter? Cup of sugar?
I have none nor the patience
for solicitation
for polite salutations
or whatever it is that you’re trying
to sell me today.
I want to give more
than what fits through a window,
so, if you will,
please come to the door.
okay poetry 