Madame X--5/22

By John Singer Sargent
I think I understand how she feels.


Madame X

I can be a femme fatale for you
and abort my greens and blues for darker shades
if you can give up Cinderella for a few moments
for stranger companies in the linen closet.

Go ahead and tell me stories of your former lovers.
I've lost my taste for jealousy
and I've forgotten how to make dolls
of other girls.

I can make my eyelids film noir umbrellas
and you can climb underneath if you want
but I can't promise you won't feel the rain
now and then.

I can be a sexpot in a victorian city
as minimal as math, my skin full of forumlas
and under my veil you can see
the bobcat still slinking around inside me
appearing and reappearing
eating songbirds to survive
dont' bother to trap him
he's there for good.

Overexposure won't make me less of a woman
but don't be surprised
if it makes you less of a man.

Assia--5/17

A homage to Sylvia Plath regarding the woman who tore her and Ted Hughes apart. Greatly inspired by "The Rival". Don't know if it's publishable, but feedback is appreciated.

-db

******



Assia

You can blame my ghost all you want,
you moon-faced wretch.
You with pierced craters grated in with glassy stars.
You can dance in your veil and stroll around a prize or two
someday, a daughter
might be a decent consolation prize
confirmation, a wailing gold trophy.

In the sinister hour of 3 a.m. you’ll think of a past life
when you wore red wool coats
and spoke with an accent
and you’ll sweep it away in a weak little tide.

Nature moves in cycles
and you’re just the washing machine
he sits upon
waiting for the opportune moment
to reveal his transparencies
in a series of little papercuts
that he calls songs
that he calls poems
that we’re supposed to call art.

You can pretend your face isn’t changing
You can pollute the air with enough fake roses
and a perfume that calls you 'princess',
but my ink will stain everything you own.

Bitch--5/17

Bitch

I want to pull you out of me like tape
from a cassette
and all your music will lie crumpled at my feet.
(There is too much
I have yet to erase.)

The town you live in
has all the flavor of cigarette paper
but instead of watching it burn
I chewed it up like bubblegum
(how many times
will I have to break my jaw over you?)

Spring never really came for you
unless you count that day you noticed the rings
in that glass case you call security
and sang Patsy Cline as you undid her bra.
(I can narrate the whole scene and yawn at the end
but I can’t be your suicide doll anymore.)

I can’t be the dog that lies her head on your knee
some bitch waiting to play fetch all day
in the sun-swallowed wheat fields
(oh, I can’t wait
to show you how much I don’t care.)

I have a secret that makes me claustrophobic
the ceiling is too low
and I feel like a deranged parakeet
gnawing at the bars of the cage.

Gold---5/6

Gold

The camera flicked off
and I saw only my reflection
in the infra-red lens.
You had disappeared from behind me;
your resonance
laid like dead orange butterflies
on the asphalt
until a hot wind took it into the
enormous white silence of the sky.
The parade was over.

The ribbons hung in the trees
and the balloons floated across the lake
to meet at the island in the middle.
The bluebirds turned back into children
as if some curse had been lifted
and I saw things
not through the eyes of some hysterical muse
but through my own.

You said in some unfinished melody:
“There’s a hole in my heart where there will
always be a place for you.”
Now I’m sure I don’t want to live in a hole.
I’m looking for a whole heart to live in
and I promise to whomever is willing to let me rent the space
that I’ll paint the walls gold
and hang paper stars from the windows.
I’ll look out at the perfect rhythm of their organs
and feel safe as the wind chimes
sing along with their blood.

So while you claim a few highways as yours
and try to fill the hole I left open
with purple paint and cigarette ash;
while you throw pennies into goldfish ponds
wishing for a girl to write your songs for you,
while you stand in your glass box
whoring out gold rings and broken TVs,
while you’re swallowing the weather like cough syrup,
I’ll be busy letting birds out of cages and
calling love whatever I want to call it.