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Poetry

Poetry from Sonya Vatomsky

written by Guest Contributor July 10, 2015

Bathymetry

 

When I was young a teacher told me all

artists dream about tidal waves

(James Joyce, for example)

so when the horizon came down blue

and heavy I wasn’t exactly unprepared.

I also know scientists hate that term:

tidal wave.

“It’s nothing to do with the tide,”

though when you see me

it’s a moonpull

as much as it is anything.

Think about it — I mean, ever notice

they call it lunacy

like the moon’s got her own

special kind of hysteria

just because sometimes gravity doesn’t work

quite the way they like?

Men are always policing my mouth like that:

“You can’t bone me,” for example.

Like I’m a butterfly

that won’t stay in its goddamned net.

It’s a good reason to never trust entomologists

with their pins and their bell jars,

looking at your wings thinking catch,

thinking mount, separating the art

from the artist

with their little knives,

so they can go back to enjoying

their molesters and rapists in peace

while I wane and wax

into something unignorable:

I’ve got the kind of light

you name galaxies after.

Andromeda, for example,

which means “ruler of men”

so, of course,

they stripped her naked and chained her

to a rock.

As the tide crawls in on its wet hands

I pinch my nose,

which hurts, with all the metal in it,

and that’s a funny way for the universe to end,

or begin, as it will.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorian Gray

 

Remember me like nails breaking on chalkboard. Remember me

like childhood dreams where you must drown yourself in thick

swampwater before they come for you and like papercuts that

won’t stop bleeding, like a scar from the night that turned out to

be the worst night of your life. Remember your life. Remember

your life like my panic attacks and their side-effect of gastrointestinal

distress, like my guts lurch each time my ears ring my eyes blur my

palms sweat like I’m waiting for the first first date in the world. Remember

your first date. Remember your hands and her hands and armrests

and your hands and her hands and the moment is gone and you

stare at your ceiling all night with the greatest emptiness. Remember

me like the greatest emptiness, like the bruise you left on my thigh

was invisible ink like your spit was invisible ink like your breath was

invisible ink and the special light I need to read the words is the one

in my bedroom. Remember me like fingers down the throat of the

first time you felt known. Remember feeling known. Remember feeling

known like it leaves your body with so much saliva and bruised

knees and running tapwater, remember me like running tapwater.

Remember me like I put myself back together, like I literally re-member

myself every morning out of what’s left when I wake up. I dust my

limbs I grease my joints I blow up my lungs soft like plastic bags

carrying nothing. Remember me like a portrait in your attic that

you never throw away, that forgets you more and more each time

you look at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Groundmeat

 

The witch lives in a house on chicken legs. Outside,

she flies with mortar and pestle; she is perpetual motion

because

a woman cannot stop, I cannot stop. The forest around her is

old chestnut stability; trees wave her home

with open arms; trinkets droop from their limbs

like pieces of forgotten lovers. The witch cooks

love down in a pot. She feeds herself to

herself; she

grows stronger. She is waiting.

Another woman carves her house into my arm;

the lines filled with ink like a flooding river Styx. I can find

my way there when I forget everything else,

when my gums lose their pink grip on teeth

because the edge of a cliff

is no place for salvation — quite the opposite. The edge

of a cliff is for jumping, is for ends, is for cutting the ribbon around

the throat till the head rolls down. Till my monstrosity is exposed.

Pick it up and bring it back. Give it to me like a first kiss.

You see me, you know me.

I am cooking love in a hot black pot. I have

so many recipes and even more time. I have salt. I have pepper.

I have fresh parsley if it comes to that. The witch

The witch lives in a house on my arm;

she is my blueprint like veins are and I am cooking

with mortar and pestle, I am perpetual motion,

I grow stronger — study my mother sauces

and my eyes darken like roux

as I wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spidersilk

 

You looked so far away I felt crazed; gutted myself like

a fish and dug in, laid my entrails bare and ruby-red on

your grandfather’s table and watched you rifle through

them like cheap rings at a weekend market, like I’d make

your fingers swell and stain green and my rubies would

fall off in a day’s wear. This is how you look when I show

you all I have, spread myself before you like a picnic:

here a little bottle of what makes me cry most, a glass

dish of my greatest fears, a tin of mille-feuille folded

from the kind of trust that gives your bones an earthquake,

sugared with the weight of my lashes on your shoulder

as you sleep, the rising and falling of windswept sand

dunes that move with your moods till I’m left on flat

ground with nothing around for miles except the echo

of my own heart in my own ears, chicken head on feather

body, thoughts running all over like lost, motherless children.

 

 


 

 

Sonya VatomskySonya Vatomsky is a Moscow-born, Seattle-raised feminist poet and essayist. She edits and reviews poetry at Fruita Pulp & her chapbook MY HEART IN ASPIC is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. Find her online at sonyavatomsky.tumblr.com and @coolniceghost.

 

Poetry from Sonya Vatomsky was last modified: July 10th, 2015 by Guest Contributor
poetrySonya Vatomsky
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