Poems by Stephanie Marlis
Since I can't afford the poetry book I want, I'll write down my favorite here.
proffer--to put before a person for acceptance, from the Old French por, pro+offrir, to offer--so she dressed, carefully, with allure: flippy skirt, shirt the shade of blue grass, following through on a gathering impulse,. She At a coffeehouse, she watches a couple against a green wall kiss, and she barters with God, like a child offering a little toe in exchange, for what she thinks they have.
technique--the procedure by which a task is accomplished, from the Greek tekhnikos, of art--repeatedly the artful way he undertakes to spoil the charge between them: by telling her of a friends' incontinent mother soiling the couch or the grunge of his son's underwear, his own bouts of indigestion; inasmuch as he remains her flower, the fetid images growing beautifully fecund around any mention of his body, his method fails.
"The spark, arc between two working hearts settling for words."
rule--an authoritative prescription for conduct, from the Latin regula, rod--as simple as: whatever you wish others would do unto you, do unto them. He entered from behind, twice, a little difficult at first: lots of lubricant and patience. The next morning, as she went into the kitchen thinking pancakes, he was already measuring: flour, milk ,eggs, salt.
Scorpion
The night I return from Los Angeles
I visit Mars--
there, once again, are Hollywood's
blighted mini-malls
and the clownish, mop-topped palms
of a riot city.
Later, when the tremor
of a Martian earthquake
wakes me,
I join Giordano's scorpion
in the midnight kitchen--
with a luckless moth bucking
like a lassoed pony
inside the round aquarium.
After cartoons the next morning,
we lift off the copper screen top
and remove, with six-inch tweezers,
frayed wings and the sucked-out thorax
thrown down,
spiraling
like a glove.
proffer--to put before a person for acceptance, from the Old French por, pro+offrir, to offer--so she dressed, carefully, with allure: flippy skirt, shirt the shade of blue grass, following through on a gathering impulse,. She At a coffeehouse, she watches a couple against a green wall kiss, and she barters with God, like a child offering a little toe in exchange, for what she thinks they have.
technique--the procedure by which a task is accomplished, from the Greek tekhnikos, of art--repeatedly the artful way he undertakes to spoil the charge between them: by telling her of a friends' incontinent mother soiling the couch or the grunge of his son's underwear, his own bouts of indigestion; inasmuch as he remains her flower, the fetid images growing beautifully fecund around any mention of his body, his method fails.
"The spark, arc between two working hearts settling for words."
rule--an authoritative prescription for conduct, from the Latin regula, rod--as simple as: whatever you wish others would do unto you, do unto them. He entered from behind, twice, a little difficult at first: lots of lubricant and patience. The next morning, as she went into the kitchen thinking pancakes, he was already measuring: flour, milk ,eggs, salt.
Scorpion
The night I return from Los Angeles
I visit Mars--
there, once again, are Hollywood's
blighted mini-malls
and the clownish, mop-topped palms
of a riot city.
Later, when the tremor
of a Martian earthquake
wakes me,
I join Giordano's scorpion
in the midnight kitchen--
with a luckless moth bucking
like a lassoed pony
inside the round aquarium.
After cartoons the next morning,
we lift off the copper screen top
and remove, with six-inch tweezers,
frayed wings and the sucked-out thorax
thrown down,
spiraling
like a glove.