You are not deviants, Sedimentary layers, In fantasies you choose the end & Ira furor brevis est
by Lucy Holt
[ poetry - july 05 ]
You are not deviants
All hair thieves listen
You are not deviants
Hair is beautiful
We all want beautiful things
You are not deviants
You have an art
You use the sharpest scissors
Careful of the unsunned necks
Plaits make your job easier
You cut below the pretty ribbon
All you want is hair released
Hair of every shade
The one perfect shade
You saw it in a dream when you were five
Sedimentary layers
If a geologist were to wander in
and see us lying here
-my head on your chest but
your legs on top of mine-
he'd certainly be a little perplexed
over whether you or I came first.
In fantasies you choose the end
With their wives feigning death like mice -
breasts and depths facing the wall to be safe -
the husbands dream of flesh brimming;
of women who become nostalgic with sex
and will hold them like babies afterwards;
of Klimt's fish female, with puckered lips,
with mermaid-beauty plus penetrability;
of prostitutes with stage-curtain merkins
and operatic orgasms; of sweet-sixteens
plucking their nipples after guitar practice;
of phosphorescent, chimerical women;
women unborn and thus only/never theirs.
Ira furor brevis est
1.
I wore my new dress and you ripped it.
So I ripped it in half. The two pieces
lay on the floor like sister-pups
sleeping in a yinyang for warmth.
2.
When you found out my secret
you had two handfuls of my head:
fingers wrapped latitudinously
around, thumbs pointing up to
my eyes like astronomers.
If you had shaken my head
back and forth my body beneath
would have swung like a rope ladder.
