Thursday, July 07, 2005

This is a sort of riff on a previous poem:

A Natural History of Thumbs


my first kiss, a sea lion, sloppy,
slack lips against trembling
fish-colored tongues,
...

saliva sliding over our chins until my electric
blue tube top is wet, a slick between my white
ten year-old breasts, so new they still ache with being born,
riven with blue veins
...

me laying on top of the sea lion during recess
in the center lawn of the school,
not caring if anyone saw,
not caring if the principal came and tore me
off him, everything gone warm and gone black
...

only this wormy mess of teeth clicking
against teeth, his whiskers in my mouth,
fast as slugs
on speed and a burning
...

in my cunt, I grind against the sea lion trying to feel
through the 16 layers of my panties, jeans, apron
and lead skirt, grinding so hard the sea lion whimpers
in pain, grinding to grind out the burning
between my legs, it is the strangest fucking
...

I've ever felt and I can't stop, I can't,
I hold the sea lion down by his flippers,
push his head far into the earth with my mouth
...

he’s trying to squirm free, the lawn churning into
wet mud, I’m pushing, moving,
the sun so bright I can see it behind
my closed lids, a small planet
spinning in my pelvis
...

then he slips from beneath me,
wipes his mouth on the grass, waddles away fast and
...

that’s the first time I know it, that to love
is to be left wet and holding

2 comments:

Patty said...

This is really cool! I like how the poem has grown, taken on layers of surreality, and yet still holds the essense of the original: the heat of hunger; dizzying desire; and the throb of need.

I love the idea of "riffing" on a poem!

Christine E. Hamm, Poet Professor Painter said...

Thanks, yeah, I have mixed feelings about this one.