Incantation

Come to me.

Call to life

your curly crown,

lure poker-straight

locks that bind.

Come to me.

With fevered lips

tattoo sonnets

on my belly,

on my breasts.

Come to me.

Waiting, waiting,

wet craving

I writhe

like Sappho, island-bound.

Entheos

Invitation to the Poet

We are

ten thousand mothers,

ten thousand lovers.

A constellation of courtesans

wreathed in gauzy firmament.

Red ripe pomegranate seeds

beckon on our tongues.

We are

thrumming drumbeat,

steel guitar and banshee wail,

throbbing brace beneath

dusty maenad feet and

Dionysus ’ lip-warm flute.

We are

Queens of tide and tempest,

waverush and wanderlust.

The God behind god,

our cloisonné skin claims

the prophet, warp and weft.

We are

gypsy mermaid daughters

of kings and memories,

of love and war,

of earth and heaven.

Take us in your mouth, Poet.

In your marrow wed us.

Untitled

Once upon a time

we were magical.

Hummingbirds,

nightingales,

the very sea itself,

longed to be

the skin

we kissed.

I wonder if we will be

like the part in my hair,

ever so often lost,

tousled out of regiment.

Tresses occasionally

thrown this way and that,

tumbling, tangling,

no lines of demarcation,

a wild, seaweed snarl.

Once upon a time,

we aligned.

You said,

“monumental.”

I said nothing,

feeling

everything.

My sweet

Dada baby…

the day will come

when

monumental

becomes

mossy monument.

Still,

I’ll remember

the clear, dark night

we made the sky

so envious

he pelted us with rain.

Laughing, we slick thigh kissed

his envy into benediction.

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor

How I wanted to be

Circe .

I wove a slow eight,

offered you wine

from the hollow

of my belly.

Ah, and don’t you know…

I felt like Circe.

You took me

in your mouth:

“beautiful woman”

“older woman”

and gave me

away.

You wear

bragging rights

like a wedding ring.

You changeling son

of Aphrodite and Hermes,

it’s not in your marrow,

but on your sleeve

that you keep the

memory of me.