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.

 

 






[step back to issue 3]