More from Wicked Alice

SAINT MONICA OF THE GAUZE

The room is red with iodine. Her ears stop
and her thighs slacken against
the bed. The owls would like to unwrap

her, as owls do, always looking
for the next loose shutter, the goldfinch
bathing in a pile of spilled parmesan

in the convenience store parking lot.
She explains a few things. Static
wracks the telephone line, a dry tornado

on the helipad after a freeway crash.
The linoleum has seen years of other feet
and beds rolling in and out, how

they hauled her from the gurney as if
she weighed something other
than what was left. They ask: but what

about your Cleveland flowering pear
trees, or the creeping vinca, the clematis
your husband promised to burn if it

came back? They say that she will get out.
There will be time and muscle
enough for hanging wet towels on a line.

© Mary Biddinger 2007

Adam Fieled (West Philadelphia, USA): "On Love"

What tide is the realest, which pulls in a kiss?
     The rigor of reaching the thing-in-itself,
from subject to object, chaos to bliss,
     our frail intuition of heavenly health?
Our love is not molecules, dumbly colliding,
     nor is it knowledge, formal and static,
         nor is it accident, reasoned and plumbed—
it's real, meta-rational, soaring and gliding,
     felt like an earthquake, bringing up panic,
         taking our parts and achieving a sum.

The greater part of love is sacrifice—
     flesh intermingled, tensing (push!) tingled,
this is the secret I learn from your eyes.
     Giving my body, knotted, single,
tiny eruptions that come from my tongue;
     plunging down surfaces, slicking the flesh,
         thoughtless as leopards or hurricane winds—
watching you shudder, watching you come,
     rapt in the throes of an innocent death,
         giving my life to an inch of your skin.

Thus, we trade in secure oblivion
     for reckless reality, messy and fleeting.
Such is the cosmos— creation, carrion,
     motions of molecules merging and meeting.
Nothing is lost but notions of self-ness,
     hard ideations that close and clatter,
         rages of ego that strain at their walls—
nothing is gained but a sense of the deathless,
     "there-ness" of spirit, "there-ness" of matter,
         ultimate "there-ness" that scares as it calls.

© Adam Fieled 2003-2025

originally published in Hinge Online

From Wicked Alice

THIRD NIPPLE REMOVAL

She froze the violets in liquid nitrogen.
She lifted her frock, tried to place
a penny over the blinking eye.

A crash. Some variations of purple.
One of the ceramic swan planters
let out a rusty nailed sigh. She sewed

on a swatch of key-scraped uterus.
She distributed the Vicodin. She disputed
the license allegations. She loved.

© Daniela Olszewska 2007

From Milk Magazine

the syn-aesthete's love poem

And yesterday, blue tasted like licorice.
Even the wind chimes caused dizziness;
the ache of paper lanterns rotting
from the acacias. Perhaps the L in my name
makes you sad, evokes a film where a woman waves
from a train. Or how this horizon wants to be a hymn.
If you listen, you can hear the holes in the alphabet,
the sounds lit by the lamps of our bones.
Perhaps with this page I could fashion a boat
or a very convincing window— 

a dress made entirely of vowels.

© Kristy Bowen 2005

From Pirene's Fountain

SEDUCTION POEM

I want the slew of muscle, a less
cerebral meeting place: no word
but your male shout, the shirred
unpublic face and honest skin
crying to me, yes,
the mouthless, eyeless tenderness
crying to be let in.

Unbutton all your weight, like a bird
flying the night’s starred nakedness:
put down your grammatical tongue, undress
your correct and social skin:
come white and absurd,
all your language one word
crying to be let in.

© Alison Croggon 2003

More from diode

thicket

I am all butter cream and lace when
we abandon this house for another
with a picket fence and a tiny door.
Clandestine, destined
to have too many holes we can’t fill.
Despite the flurry of hands, we are drowsy,
playing cards and fucking in the afternoon.
Holding our nostalgia like a cake knife.

Soon, we abandon this car for another
with a blue lush interior that smells like Winstons.
I make a flip book out of our indiscretions’
misspellings. Finger the upholstery
while we play roulette with beer bottles.
Kiss me, kiss me not.
My hope all parade floats and dancing bears
until I split the infinitives,
spill the milk, slit the window screens.
Go for the jugular.

My sleep is still white, all paper and milk.
Counting the cracks in the ceiling,
dividing three and three and three.
Outside the amaryllis is ridiculous,
all lewdly red and unruly.
I am counting spiders in the eves as you leave.
One and one and one.

© Kristy Bowen 2010

From diode

PROMISE RING

When the horror materialized I was noodling
with my boots on and waiving everyone’s
signature. Since then I know I have arrived

with keys where the fingers ought
to waggle but teenagers do not enter
into it. I didn’t want this way back when

I was mean. It is an accordion effort
just to breathe with you, to align snouts
and buttons and no jumping to conclusions.
On the idiot box a woman in poltergeist

drag and all my instincts chewing out
of me like field mice. I thump the cushion
away like a professional but can’t tell

you where the hawk will land. Crook
of your consciousness, funny bone
splintering danger in

the dog’s soft palate. Cool as a bowl
of anti-freeze that holds
still the moon’s reflection.

© Jen Tynes 2010