Terese Svoboda
2 poems
**
Prison Sex
His back-of-the-envelope
doodles scare guards
who might indeed mail them
if they weren’t addressed Hernia.
His cellmate uses his eyes in hopes
of stopping leopards
from crawling off
the envelopes. Cha-cha-
cha. Noontime. They march the slope
and back and he always farts
around, the drug Ahem
never reaching his brain, a diarrhea
of space and time that copes
with nothing, his legendary laugh in the yard
so femme
it rings out curly Loves.
No plea-bargain and sleep
deprived, he escapes, lards—
with his own excised fat—a thin,
shrimp-vein-thin, jaw-
bone of a rat into a lip-
sized hole where birds
wheeze a This Way
loudly, etcetera.
While whistles blow, he lopes,
lupine, into traffic, awards
old ladies with help again
and again, gaga
after his near rope
swing. Shot in her yard,
he was better off in,
sobs Hernia, oh Hernia.
**
First Dance
Here’s the waltz, his fist
against your belly, how close
can you come? Kissed
is how close, almost
a quarter inch off his face.
Alarm grows with him, fudge-
y with longing. Dip, turn—futz
with it. His new boots knife-edge
your toes but you don’t scream
Don’t, you say Go and Not
now. The scrum you dance in
is way asymptote,
never quite meeting,
You can’t lift his feet, in lieu.
You can’t drop the curtain.
A lover could speak, not you.
**
return to sawbuck 1.3
**
Terese Svoboda has poetry forthcoming in Columbia, Qualm, and Blackbird. Her fourth book
is Treason, published by Zoo Press.
**
Prison Sex
His back-of-the-envelope
doodles scare guards
who might indeed mail them
if they weren’t addressed Hernia.
His cellmate uses his eyes in hopes
of stopping leopards
from crawling off
the envelopes. Cha-cha-
cha. Noontime. They march the slope
and back and he always farts
around, the drug Ahem
never reaching his brain, a diarrhea
of space and time that copes
with nothing, his legendary laugh in the yard
so femme
it rings out curly Loves.
No plea-bargain and sleep
deprived, he escapes, lards—
with his own excised fat—a thin,
shrimp-vein-thin, jaw-
bone of a rat into a lip-
sized hole where birds
wheeze a This Way
loudly, etcetera.
While whistles blow, he lopes,
lupine, into traffic, awards
old ladies with help again
and again, gaga
after his near rope
swing. Shot in her yard,
he was better off in,
sobs Hernia, oh Hernia.
**
First Dance
Here’s the waltz, his fist
against your belly, how close
can you come? Kissed
is how close, almost
a quarter inch off his face.
Alarm grows with him, fudge-
y with longing. Dip, turn—futz
with it. His new boots knife-edge
your toes but you don’t scream
Don’t, you say Go and Not
now. The scrum you dance in
is way asymptote,
never quite meeting,
You can’t lift his feet, in lieu.
You can’t drop the curtain.
A lover could speak, not you.
**
return to sawbuck 1.3
**
Terese Svoboda has poetry forthcoming in Columbia, Qualm, and Blackbird. Her fourth book
is Treason, published by Zoo Press.
