Rebecca Loudon
6 poems
**
If I am speechless, would love be a mouth?
................................Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
bees inside the corn husk
blatant silk
royal jelly
night swung its sugary gardenia stick
................................and so it rained
................................for 97 days
we dined on the roof gerald and I
held the business end of a lightning rod
religious conversion
gerald’s hands on the electric fence
................................the body he said is a great conductor
§
a horse laid his head in my lap
I could hardly breathe the oh the oh the
christmas crisp rough fur
they were steam cleaning the streets
of vienna for mozart’s birthday
................................a bee-cloud all around
................................humming wet between
................................baroque and revolution
we had a conversation about the girls
that died one from each school
murder suicide found in an apartment
a forest clearing a fishing shack
by the river
................................gerald spoke in tongues
§
there is a banquet inside me
candied and perfumed there is
lonely and there is
there is
good
................................oh lamb of god I come I come
**
We lived in Mechanicsville
You sniffed glue in your tube sock
I left kettles on the stove to burn
Was slow to give thanks for mice chewing
Through light fixtures splints on wrist
And knee how tired they became constant
Shivering teeth curving through the upper
Jaw sick with frost fog an excess of fat
In the heart hobbled together on your desk
Clear plastic skin red lines squiggled
Pulmonary coronary systemic 5 litres
You wanted a Brazilian woman in a bikini
How extraordinary the gluteus maximus
The external oblique in torn tunnels
Which you stroked breathing the wet hair
You imagined a more delicate version
An invisible woman who knew
When to staunch when to bleed
**
like a raymond scott saint in my bed
a building floats down the street
a spaceship................lit................from the bottom
even in my sex I run flat out feet slamming
limbs.................................a storm tree
full of water
my drama played in houses
the rabbit house.................the motorcycle house
the buffalo house................jitterbugging as branches
whip................the chicken coop
you are a prairie................a sibylline cornfield
asleep in the bastille tunnel
hurt me
it's easy
you remember how................your silky mouth
circular breathing
force your whole hand into radiant
**
Double-plush Wolf in a Hungry Age
A wax snout is a lot of work for a city
girl living in the forest, even counting
the enchantments.
I bought the wire at a shop
near 5 Mile Prairie. I am a seamstress.
................................My needles are signs
................................My needles are sleeping children
Go to hell. Some patterns are unspeakable.
But back to my story.
The dogs' plush undercoats
and broad heads have stopped breathing.
................................It would be easy
................................To judge me as cruel
I basted my pointy teeth.
They're white as Betty Crocker Potato Buds,
almost. My tongue is felt, the rusty
hole in the door of the medicine cabinet,
plumed tail, my own.
A bit of fur glued on and some fork tines
and my transformation was complete. I am
the little man in the brown suit your mother
warned you about.
................................There is a simple cure:
................................Lemon juice
................................Breast milk
................................Blood-letting
I sew night and day. I carry my papier-mâché
ears straight up. I nibble nibble nibble
the center of your sweetbread heart.
**
A study of the painter’s wine-stained mouth
You asked have you started painting again?
Had I quit? This can’t be good.
I admit I squirmed inside
my LANGUAGE SELF.
No, no, this is a lie.
I misplaced the bottle.
I wanted ugly and mean
and I barreled to the hidden
hoard a-swim in sperm,
jerked you off in the kitchen
using our secret names
as the cat licked herself.
I called you skim, I called you
butterball. I opened my coral
reef for fuel.
When I am disarmed,
all the beefy babies
in their beds, I visit
a physics lab with bee
wings and wax and a cold
blue pond. Call me if it’s urgent.
I have the mask, the unguents
solid in cobalt bottles.
Every sound is a latex swimsuit
crawling up my oh, every breath
is Loteria.
**
in my remembering there was blood everywhere
something like magic but sicker a sickness
of blood & cum & stung for three days
a bee blister ....... a suck blister below
the first knuckle oh baby
this was triage your habits rolled their thumb
across my nipples I stopped the accordion wheeze
music leaked until I screamed ........... !!!!!
white shirt glaring in the theater
movie breath and the noise your throat
made when wek hissed
a bird pepper
between my lips
I swallowed the goat's tongue in the last reel
perhaps you heard me bleat......baaaa
straightened the seam in my stocking
I couldn't even sing for help
**
return to Sawbuck 1.6
**
Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Tarantella (Ravenna Press 2004), Radish King (Ravenna Press 2006) and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home (No Tell Books 2006.)
**
If I am speechless, would love be a mouth?
................................Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
bees inside the corn husk
blatant silk
royal jelly
night swung its sugary gardenia stick
................................and so it rained
................................for 97 days
we dined on the roof gerald and I
held the business end of a lightning rod
religious conversion
gerald’s hands on the electric fence
................................the body he said is a great conductor
§
a horse laid his head in my lap
I could hardly breathe the oh the oh the
christmas crisp rough fur
they were steam cleaning the streets
of vienna for mozart’s birthday
................................a bee-cloud all around
................................humming wet between
................................baroque and revolution
we had a conversation about the girls
that died one from each school
murder suicide found in an apartment
a forest clearing a fishing shack
by the river
................................gerald spoke in tongues
§
there is a banquet inside me
candied and perfumed there is
lonely and there is
there is
good
................................oh lamb of god I come I come
**
We lived in Mechanicsville
You sniffed glue in your tube sock
I left kettles on the stove to burn
Was slow to give thanks for mice chewing
Through light fixtures splints on wrist
And knee how tired they became constant
Shivering teeth curving through the upper
Jaw sick with frost fog an excess of fat
In the heart hobbled together on your desk
Clear plastic skin red lines squiggled
Pulmonary coronary systemic 5 litres
You wanted a Brazilian woman in a bikini
How extraordinary the gluteus maximus
The external oblique in torn tunnels
Which you stroked breathing the wet hair
You imagined a more delicate version
An invisible woman who knew
When to staunch when to bleed
**
like a raymond scott saint in my bed
a building floats down the street
a spaceship................lit................from the bottom
even in my sex I run flat out feet slamming
limbs.................................a storm tree
full of water
my drama played in houses
the rabbit house.................the motorcycle house
the buffalo house................jitterbugging as branches
whip................the chicken coop
you are a prairie................a sibylline cornfield
asleep in the bastille tunnel
hurt me
it's easy
you remember how................your silky mouth
circular breathing
force your whole hand into radiant
**
Double-plush Wolf in a Hungry Age
A wax snout is a lot of work for a city
girl living in the forest, even counting
the enchantments.
I bought the wire at a shop
near 5 Mile Prairie. I am a seamstress.
................................My needles are signs
................................My needles are sleeping children
Go to hell. Some patterns are unspeakable.
But back to my story.
The dogs' plush undercoats
and broad heads have stopped breathing.
................................It would be easy
................................To judge me as cruel
I basted my pointy teeth.
They're white as Betty Crocker Potato Buds,
almost. My tongue is felt, the rusty
hole in the door of the medicine cabinet,
plumed tail, my own.
A bit of fur glued on and some fork tines
and my transformation was complete. I am
the little man in the brown suit your mother
warned you about.
................................There is a simple cure:
................................Lemon juice
................................Breast milk
................................Blood-letting
I sew night and day. I carry my papier-mâché
ears straight up. I nibble nibble nibble
the center of your sweetbread heart.
**
A study of the painter’s wine-stained mouth
You asked have you started painting again?
Had I quit? This can’t be good.
I admit I squirmed inside
my LANGUAGE SELF.
No, no, this is a lie.
I misplaced the bottle.
I wanted ugly and mean
and I barreled to the hidden
hoard a-swim in sperm,
jerked you off in the kitchen
using our secret names
as the cat licked herself.
I called you skim, I called you
butterball. I opened my coral
reef for fuel.
When I am disarmed,
all the beefy babies
in their beds, I visit
a physics lab with bee
wings and wax and a cold
blue pond. Call me if it’s urgent.
I have the mask, the unguents
solid in cobalt bottles.
Every sound is a latex swimsuit
crawling up my oh, every breath
is Loteria.
**
in my remembering there was blood everywhere
something like magic but sicker a sickness
of blood & cum & stung for three days
a bee blister ....... a suck blister below
the first knuckle oh baby
this was triage your habits rolled their thumb
across my nipples I stopped the accordion wheeze
music leaked until I screamed ........... !!!!!
white shirt glaring in the theater
movie breath and the noise your throat
made when we
a bird pepper
between my lips
I swallowed the goat's tongue in the last reel
perhaps you heard me bleat......baaaa
straightened the seam in my stocking
I couldn't even sing for help
**
return to Sawbuck 1.6
**
Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Tarantella (Ravenna Press 2004), Radish King (Ravenna Press 2006) and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home (No Tell Books 2006.)
