Category: poetry

Summer

It is the third time this year

summer aged for her,

every night for eighty-four nights

golden dreams reincarnate

as the hours relive

and we count with our fingers

with fatigue, not pity.

 

For even as her lips stretch wide

she is glistening with the sweat

of labor and heart disease, her

empty hair and amber teeth shredding

stream-like into bighearted bouquets

open for age only.

 

Now we stand by

with nimble eyes without words

We save our condolences

for her funeral in a summer evening:

Her body, hairless head and all

will lose its last color

shielded in white linen in vain

against summer invasions

And before she returns elemental

to her mother, we will adorn

her celestial eyes with colorless kisses

and pray

for the death of summer.

 

by MC

Hydrolysis

                   The day Mother’s severed

 arm sailed across

                             the abandoned

                    train station my 

 hopes grew

                    a detonator, my 

                                                lips fell

to my feet.

                                                    Now 

                              four score years

                    later   my religion is 

             abducted  my

                                  hate a plastic 

                      dream   my 

                                          silence

            ten-year-old and 

still growing


The 

                  detonator 

under my skin

                                     hydrolyzed

                   into fear.
by MC

Removal

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We remember her

by the eyes only, two

three dimensional black holes

of blood and bad dreams diluted

we hold them with our teeth the way

she used to hold her tongue

with her lips her

shrinking lips for she had a way

 

of shortening them, the upper petals

diminished

in poor taste, I said. But she never

listened to me with her

starlet dreams and starlit breath emanating

 

betrayal and I

my eyes double-folded my cheeks

burning with displacement and shame

thrust my paws through the heart

of her disease. I never failed

to remind her

of a dying mother.

by MC

Sisyphus

White dreams of Sisyphus we taste them at daybreak

we taste them like lubricants we gulp without tongue

we taste and we taste as his knuckles fall out.

Midday today he sleeps and he prays

he prays on all fours grey eyes to his knees

he drinks from greased cartridges his boulder is black.

 

White dreams of Sisyphus they drip a thin trail

they shrink and elongate sporting pagan mischief

we dream and we pray our feet are so blue.

Sisyphus breathes as he pulls out his tongue

his breath is full of ants his nostrils catch fire

he drinks from his bladder he rolls without eyes.

 

Black dreams of Sisyphus we taste them at night

we taste them near roses and we taste them near mountains

we taste and we taste

we taste them like partridges our tongues are so pure:

Up the mountain he dives he recognizes the stench of vertigo

he polishes his boulder it harbors ants it is vibrant

he prays and gathers syllables he writes for truth and heresy

he looks up at the sky and the stars are all dead.

 

by MC

A Case Study of Eyelash Growth

Her eyelashes grew exponentially. She only wished to be cured. The doctors said the disease was exceptional, never seen before. She submitted to tears, which only nourished her lashes and accelerated their growth. Tweezing was a temporary solution. Cutting provided peace no longer, a matter of hours elapsed before the lashes attained their previous length. In time they acquired the density of forests and prickliness of mercury. She took to shaving. Every morning the razor skimmed the edges of her lids like a mower of rebellious weeds, and by noon the lashes would have sprouted to two black-striped veils over her eyes, arced in the shape of a parabola.

People whispered comforts to her lips and stamped kisses on her ears. The government sent its condolences. She had a collection of tweezers at the sill of her ward, all gifts from the less unfortunate. They visited her frequently and brought news to and fro. She quitted her job as a cosmetologist in the beauty salon. She was compelled to do so when her vision became so obstructed she could not beautify her customers’ eyelashes without peeling off half the lids. Now she had grown accustomed to looking from underneath her lashes.

In order for her to see they dabbed lip glosses on her eyelashes to keep them from drooping. It was an ingenious idea. She regained her sights for the time being.

The medical fees were astronomical, though, and the lip glosses cost a fortune. She borrowed money from Mothers and Fathers, neighbors and colleagues. Then at last they decided to let the eyelashes grow. They resolved to see their limits. What they did not know was the eyelashes had no limits. Seven in the morning they stopped shaving. Ten past seven, the lashes had sprung from the corners of her eyes like moist forest fungi. Fourteen past seven, they wormed up her lids and drilled into her brows. Sixteen past seven, they reached down to enclose her eyes. Seventeen past, they coiled around her ears. Then in forty five seconds, they climbed into her eardrums. At exactly seven eighteen, she cried out she couldn’t hear anything. That was how the experiment ended and she went deaf.

On the third year of the disease they started applying penicillin. The penicillin corroded her eyelashes and they finally fell off. But the penicillin had side effects. Her lips started drooping exponentially.

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by Rene Magritte
by MC

Glory

4-The-Tilled-Field-Dadaism

About the ashes we gather

eye-to-eye breathing, the nocturnal stained sheets

colorblind and strewn

messy as we marched, as in our dreams:

badge beneath tongue

summer sun drinking the shaded purple

of your beard.

It reminded us of

 

when your eyes were pierced, black hearts flaming

scared even the bullet as the confetti

sucked at your skin,

sucked your skin dry

Gravitated with greater than tectonic love

while

 

our minutes are roaring,

honey hands transmute

primeval horror of Freudian fourmis

Unleashed.

 

(the words dug like stars into you and

into you)

so we spend all night dancing, sipping

away dreams

black eyes bleached as we write

of Glory, as in

our dreams.

by MC

My Sister

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My sister with the voice of stone.

My sister with the heart of seasonal raging.

My sister with the forehead of a bald snow-kissed savanna

of alabastrine dust on top of alabastrine dreams. 

My sister with the voice of an elongated pipa string

With the face of the innocuous flesh of deer

Dripping original sin. 

My sister with lips of crooked saturated bacon strips over 

crooked teeth the color of ivory bread.

My sister with eyes of the ashes of rosewood. 

My sister with lashes of steel cutting, of

black rain of dry soot and bullet. 

My sister with the hair of a thousand eyes falling

With feet of scurrying mice and

breasts of a prehistoric vessel.

My sister with the heart of a monsoon cuffed to a tree. 

My sister with eyes of tallgrass of the unintentional poison of inarticulate executing. 

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My sister with hair the color of sun a shade of iron green more radiant than smile. 

My sister with the eyes of shotgun. 

My sister with the lips of twisted fire, of print upon print of leaves dead and reviving. 

My sister with the toes of scabs black and red dripping

My sister with invisible hands of invisible dreams

the other day I saw her they were hid behind sleeves the texture of her forbidden teeth. 

My sister with the face of denatured geometry

her eyes the color of triangles and 

her chin elephants white rising. 

by MC