Poem About My Mouth
Small, not especially sensuous, not the kind of shape to give one power, not a flower, soft yet sharp, scolded as smart (not to know it from what's gone in— all manner of poison and men—nor from the waste come out, words and in low hours matter), flirt, pretender, trying accents on like dresses, meanwhile wedded, fitted to a single tongue, if pretty, numb, probably forever scarred by a teen magazine’s kissing advice: lips should form, slow, over and over, the syllable peach— painted, poised, prone to embarrass me, site of desperation, set for combat or allure, sometimes I think impossible to hold naturally, even now this poem, can’t help it, can't stand it, wants to like me, wants you to want me, wants you to, needs you so bad—
I Let You
Because I am sick of the holy impenetrable, I will not call my body a temple, rather render the cunt a casino, my eye in the sky, my house always wins— bring me your thirsts, lay them out like bad bets, your hand when you fold, smokes crushed to smolder in ashtrays keep turning up empty, forgetting the hours, your promise, your wife. Maybe another life could have left or found me innocent, humble, a tabernacle, a garden shed, clothes drying like well- tended ghosts on the line, but I was born for the taking of what isn't mine, what I am given, however it's got. Dolled up, I’m if you want it, and as much of as, your free roulette round, your all-you-can eat, your elite hotel suite— I come at cost hidden only from who would not seek: your golden idol a cancer of debt, burnt offering a country blown clean to glass, souvenir cleaved now from memory, language forked in the mouth like the crotch of a root. What could grow here, desert built to wander forever, heat drunk for honey, play money for milk? —who sold who paradise, claimed it was yours if I named the right price? To feel flush, lucky, loved, is fleeting, and by design, who draws the game up bound to lose at its end, no bigger sucker, all appetite, in— so’s the trouble with gods who are hungry and angry, human: a story, first, to devour the sun, then one to split the beast’s belly open—told, a fortune, wheel spinning, but whose? Who makes me, who lets you, who says I do what I have power to.
The post I Will Not Call My Body a Temple appeared first on Electric Literature.
Source : I Will Not Call My Body a Temple
