3.
the women i know
they’re furies one and all,
the women i know.
they slash their mouths with curses,
rub ashes in their hair.
i see them hawking at each other before a full moon,
pissing venom,
shaking out snakes
like scarlet fever.
it would be funny if it wasn’t sad:
instead i think of them scratching,
scratching, scratching.
the sound of them fills my head at night.
i imagine their strained eyes upon me
their ghost talons
sliding between the buttons of my coat.
what misery--
what single moment slew
the woman in these women?
i see it as a domino train of lovers
falling slickly on the banks of the acheron,
sinking with the muck-weight of a thousand forevers.
my dear--you who are an easter lily blooming in the desert--
tell me a secret. what coins can free the lovers of such women?
i have brought the gold and silver, i pressed them in the sockets with my thumb.
still the dead lie putrid, lamenting themselves.
they beat their breasts, they weep without eyes:
they know the furies will come to them on still mornings
covering their faces with snake-kisses. i watch them turn over with dread and love.
the dead promise nothing. venus, they say.
sweet whore. you lied.
Author notes
This is part of a much longer poem, some parts of which are so graphic I would blush to post or publish them. However, I feel this excerpt stands rather well on its own. The entire poem, for anyone who's interested, is about interactions between lovers. And selling out, because selling out is awesome.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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wow. once again some of the most vivid, intense imagery and diction i've come across. fascinating and intriguing in a chilling, morbid way. it's taken me nearly a year to finally be able to come back to this and scratch the surface of a response.
definetly stands quite firmly on its own. amazing, gripping stuff. i'll try to restrain myself to naming just a few, but there are so many amazing lines and phrases in this.
"muck-weight"
"like scarlet fever"
"still the dead lie putrid, lamenting themselves."
"slash their mouths with curses"
"i watch them turn over with dread and love."
"it would be funny if it wasn’t sad:
instead i think of them scratching,
scratching, scratching.
the sound of them fills my head at night." [as a side note, i'm not sure about the use of the colon.]
and those last two lines. and the third stanza, perhaps most striking of all for its understated directness amid the overwhelming imagery of this poem.
i wasn't completely sure about "ghost talons," had a hard time merging these images but that's probably just me, i don't know, just not my favorite, along the fifth stanza. i like the easter lily image all right, but the shift, gold and silver, i don't know. if nothing else, might tweak the third line a bit, to make the two halves correspond more gramatically, perhaps even just by simply eliminating the "i" before "pressed."
in any case, amazing, stunning poem. -
powerful stuff
i gotta run quick,i'll elaborate later.
so long hunny boo.ha!
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