by Courtney Seymour
I ran my thumb up the
edge of
last week’s grocery list
then pulled, fresh
slip at the ready:
1
My pliant trunk slung
across the frame of his
parked car arced forward
crack of my hip with the
brass of open-palmed
familiarity in his
dominion
2
My body tucked inside
his elbows, knees
a china cup stacked in his yet
toppling as the passenger
seat became a communion table,
my gilded thigh set out for
the taking
3
Rocked back, pelvis landing on
bone and hands in my hair
and in between
and how he showed me all
the restraint of which he was
able, presented to me
this prize
as the cat might drop his
prey at the end of my bed
4
Hand flat, pupils fixed
and I didn’t even feel
the first wave—
an exploratory pass across
my left cheekbone, a second slap
and a sentence wrought of that
I had already turned down
in speech and in my silence
I knew no word for safety
5
My neck in the crook of
his hand, fingers tense
and his eyes pressing into
me with forceful purpose drawn
from my collar and my
breastbone bared so deep
that it could barely breathe
the names he dared to call me
6
Ivory bleeding down
my arms and torso taut,
prone and flexing at the end
but no, his presumption reigning
down on my humiliation
etched in milky letters:
“this is (not) okay”
7
This head a storm
and out to sea,
his spleen, like contempt
but cushioned by
the hotel pillows between us:
a parting, and he walked back
with his unasked for-giveness
an offering thrust in my way:
“to be clear:
you were out of control”
8
My pliant trunk slung
across the sheets and hearts
and off the margins of
this tarnished screen—the movie plays
my retina burned familiar scene
this night of what was
to be a poem but ended
in “but I’m not done”
and “I will forever deny that
I betrayed you”—
a sacred misconstruction of my
fraying seams
9
Once upon a time
he ran his thumb up the
edge of
my jade cotton dress
then pulled, fresh
slip at the ready:
コメント