[x]

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

Like petals and leavesWhen she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky.

And she thinks of him.

She thinks of him digging his toes
into soft, damp sand,
wading in shallow depths before
being carried by crescents of the sea.

She thinks of him in a blur of curls, in the
warmth on her waist and the coolness on her lips,

pressing the memories and the maybes
like petals and leaves
to paper.

And she thinks of him.

The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c

LingerieEvery woman owns one garment
that remains tucked away,
saved for special occasions
when it will be seen.

It is almost always midnight
black, or blood red, and
covered in lace, or made
of mesh, soft and delicate
as the skin it covers.

Such things should be hidden,
lest the owner be labeled
as something other than "lady."

It has a power we can't
control, one that transforms
denim and cotton clad
ragdolls into Barbies,

perfectly proportioned plastic,
smooth and flawless hourglasses
that turn on command.

We groan and flinch
as satin strings pull us
apart and together,
and heartstrings are plucked
as we scrutinize our reflection;

we are not

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

grassy field with rustgrassy field with rust
--------------------------

I'd heard about the old car, three miles out of town and all alone. I just had to see it. It was time. School was over for the summer, my friends were at camp, and I was bored. I set out Thursday morning for a hike, following directions that Uncle Will had given me. As the heat was still growing with the climb of the sun, I found the field and wandered around looking, and looking some more, trying not to be distracted by bees buzzing in the flowers, and butterflies and baby mice. Then it was there, just a bit upslope from the bottom of a natural swale, and just below the sky at th

Demons are Smarter Than YouThe mist obediently hovers within the binding circle, coming once more and tamely to my call. How raucous it was when first I summoned it! How loudly it roared its name to the ceiling—how silent were the heavens that night. But now it is silent when it arrives, as silent as the heavens when I call, for I have bade it so. With it comes the sulfurous reek of its home and its own pets—a pair of tiny bat-winged imps no larger than my hand—and a deepening of the shadows in my basement conjury.

The fool has cast his spells of summoning again, and never were more clichéd words uttered than in this room. He thinks I am silent because he ordered

Pausing By The WineMarriage is
the frustration of reality

when the man who works the wine section
pauses in his tracks to make sure
you've found everything you "really need...are you sure?"

With a look that tells you
he finds you sort of beautiful

and you wonder how your life
might be different,

if any man other than this one
had ever looked at you like that.

DormantWinter is a blank slate,
but not like Rousseau's—
it cleanses
sucking out warmth like poison
leaving only windburnt frost
tacked to the window pane

all we remember
is the numbness
the shuddering
skittish steps across the ice
snowflakes pasted to our faces
smoke rising from our lips
dragged across bleak clouds

winter has us captured
bound by fur and walls
drifting in our eggshelled silence

bone cold until we birth ourselves by warmth
emerge from our shells wet and heaving
uncurl our fingers one by one
joints crackling like fire at our backs

until spring comes
drip by tender drip
old wounds thaw
we are found raw,

rootslike drowned men who have lost their
clothes and faces, they lay suspended
facing the sun and grinning without
eyes through the ripples of the water.

those passing by wonder how they got here,
these homeless men without fingers or toes
long spindly stumps twisting into lost roots:

reaching to the east, to the south,
to the homes they have forgotten.

sci-fi stories about the end of the world1.

the species invents prophecies
all of which contain terrors

ex;

a beleaguered sun collapses into itself

2.

It's not yet night when the committee interrupts the regularly scheduled programming
and describes the inertia as unforgivable.

Outside the grief, the cardboard:
Every time you teach a computer about distance
the terrorists win.

In every scenario: No colorado left,
and survivors leave messages
for the future.

Before the last people on Earth forgot how to speak,
he thought of that day.

The committee was right
to describe space as an absence.

3.

The more artistic
of the species' prophecies include fields

Some
prese

WhitmanI am all that grows from me
and all that grows from me is sacred—
              my hair, dirty roots reaching towards sky,
fed by sky, shifted by its undulating currents
              my fingers, spiders, crescents, twigs,
gaunt, blunt, probing, inquisitive...prurient
              my ears, awkward conch shells jammed on as if by mistake,
rigid and ridged, elven,
innocent like unexplored caves for children to bound gaily into
resounding with echoed cheers of courage wanting
as if a dozen more children waited within, fearless guides;
              my nose, obdurate.
The reach of my eyes knows no bounds;
what walls are there to throw my body against?

Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.

Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.

Perha

What Soft DreamsWhat soft dreams we lay -
What soft dreams, like infants put to rest -
Frightfully bare, and compromised,
Our kisses on their breasts.

We close our eyes and trust them safe,
Kept 'til break of dawn -
Forgetting that the night is fickle,
And dutifully, as long -

It safeguards some,
Covets others,
Moved by neither coin nor threat
Nor anguished mother's cry.

Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.

The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.

She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.

"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy

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The Animal

by *yesilm, Mar 20, 2012, 1:47:42 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / Erotic / Free Verse

(Howl into my ear;
give me your claws.
I want the animal in you;

in you I shall nest.)

Take your clothes off, take them off for me.
Let me see the scars and the marks,
those dark moles and faint sun spots.

I want to memorize the way your fur grows.
I want to tickle my cheeks with your goose bumps.
Let me count the bruises and the cuts.

I'll bless them with names;
I'll lick away the blood stains.
We can lie skin to skin for days.

I have enough kisses for your brows and lashes,
for nails, teeth and toes, for thighs and knees;
in your curves and dents I'll nuzzle my nose.

Let me see your skin dance.
Through and around; your every breath performs,
through and around, an ancient holy chant.

I don't want your dreams; forget the ifs and the maybes.
All those regrets you carry are nothing but sad stories.
You don't have to utter a single word;

your body holds all the promises.
Don't tell me any secrets, hold your confessions;
just take your clothes off, take them off for me.

© 2012 melekelif