AFTER SPILLING SUGAR ON THE FLOOR
I sweated in Cuba one season past summer
And didn't imagine had I been any dumber
I'd have worked on something even hotter to do
Like painting a tin roof black at two
P.M. in the full-faced sun. No, cutting cane
In retrospect was decent work and sweetened pain:
I was stepping in sugar with your spirit on earth
While your mama was in a pantry giving birth
To a long, thin species of household dragon
That coils to constrict and constricts to poison
Any man she can wrap her scales around
And bite off flesh till only the bone is found.
I crunched around your kitchen then heard you curse:
"You're stepping in sugar with my spirit on earth."
LYING ON CORKS
i'm lying on corks. they're hurting me.
- patrick white
Pretty much the same fall wind
that ruffles and fluffs your pubic hair,
that brings color to faraway maple trees,
that ripples the surface of Middle River
and darkens its pale blue demeanor, now
ponies and canters ‘cross your husband's brow
and ventilates that perspiring, restless head
before the wind gloriously turns about
with greater force (god bless it, god bless it!)
and facilitates in so doing--nay, enables--
our escape into the wild rose bushes by and by
the banks. O sure they scratch, sure they cut,
sure they gouge, you bet we bleed--
of course this is what lying on corks would
likely be just like--but we're alive to touch,
we're alive to kiss, ah, we're up to love again.
UNITY OF MIND
Come see a luna moth
Caught on the screen of the greenhouse,
Pinned in a cloaked, outspread position
Like it was in the midst of prayers
That apparently got no favorable answer.
I also want you to look above the bug, baby,
And focus on out to sea.
Notice the sailboats bending to the whitecaps,
Weighted down by men stretched out
In parallel, and then uprighted
By their unity of mind.
Their unity of mind:
I wonder how many of them would want you
The way I do. Somehow,
Those guys don't look like they're into
Overweight, under-bathed women.
Unity of mind: I'm betting they're singsong insistent
On shaved underarms and a smooth vagina,
And a brain that knows how to survive
In silence. But me, love. But me—
I crave you the same way
That pretty bug on the screen
Had to have the nightlight in the hothouse,
And while I won't die spread-eagled for your ass,
I am willing to honor those who might.
I'm sailing into town this evening
To find a talented milliner
And have her cut me out a pale green cape.
It'll be something I can wear at sea
And something I can swish around
Your curving, bulbous person
To hide you from the outside world
(Just in case I'm wrong about
The boaters in the distance
And all their unity of mind).
__________________________________________________________________________
William C. Blome is a writer of poetry and short fiction. He beds down nightly in-between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is an MA graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Amarillo Bay, Prism International, Taj Mahal Review, The Rusty Nail, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.
