Matina L. Stamatakis
Spasmodic
In darkling pond I contract mussel
in palms: one daphnia too caustic
twitch, spiny cauls clutch and paperweight
contents hard of muscle fat, deiform
in their own eclat.
Cocoons will curdle or dogear,
metamorphose into jelly after seismic
wave of mouth slivers transparent flesh only
to jerk loose five furious limbs.
[My God, how beast struggles].
What of Vein Seeps into
Sachet
in a blaze of hot, dusty air I plump the artificial waves
feeling pulse as broken artifact of a once
beating heart
now silent form and teetering love-lump:
a shell of zero to do
catawba full of lung
an ebonized aorta
in its late withering state
[is maquette with synthesis?]
transfused and
ripe-bleeding
out elemental
properties
of I:
heady air, artificial being.
A Curious Mist
O it thumps and reverberates
past my window like a loose end
a string to mend the broken pane
of white escape
its complexities
block out the sun
and anything that is cantic
with the presence
of red
*
at the carnival we contemplate
dying our hands the color of Chay root
and cicatrix
[I do
not think
I’ll make it home to test their origins]
our candied mouths make their first appearances
as virgins
who do not taste anything sticky
until told
**
in vernal days I see myself as a canary
or mother’s sickly valerian shoots
I will ask
how they bend to look like dying pricks
and she will wave and tap her foot like she’s performing
her first zapateo
shake her string-thin finger
as she sends me to my room to glare at the window
Clusters
a circle crosses that of a circle,
gentle blur’s circumference
where exhaust is born plump--
suckling fetus and be death-gone all that
palpates with these metronome
machines
are ivory-laden bells
[nothing ever sounds
good in ivory,
nor yellow-white, neon-colored,
earthen-hued--
nothing is an impeccable
bubble]
I cling to with ear.