A Sexual Tour of the Deep South
I just read this book of poetry called A Sexual Tour of the Deep South, by Rosemary Daniell. Amazing. Here is a cut-up of all the lines I love:
-----------
slide beneath your covers smelling of honey, dripping of salt-- I bring the razor.
tonight to jerk off or recall me,
she's opened like a purse knitted unknitted vacuumed & scraped hooked like a fish & told "The cervix has no nerve ends..."
the shotgun jerks toward the cotton tail of the frozen female
a slash of catgut stitches
you're all back issues of Vogue a catalogue of info on how to fuck our fathers on how to o.d. on barbs stick heads into ovens lie on a street in Chinatown-- one eye shot out
To make me tear the husband from my neck like a cross turned green
Blood, when I swallowed him, I swallowed diamonds that sank & sank
Blood, I'm as caught on your cross as any farm girl who wakes in sulfur & haste, begging mercy for the hand up her skirt during church
in an old Buick: the smell of rubber,
the scooping of ovaries of still-closed eyes yet why if that's right do you now tomgirl in boots chase the Toms rush the tiger lillies rub against us singing
1 baby 2 though nine years younger your red beard makes you the father I never had
you're my boyfriend I'm eleven, a girl
I know my most valuable part: the soft fur at the base of my belly-- ripe for skinning
I'm learning to love the stains I leave on motel sheets
penetrate my cunt stuffed with shards of real China left from my mother's broken life
---
"What holds women back from widespread homosexuality? ... To be loved by a woman would mean to be loved by someone as inferior as oneself." -Una Stannard, Women in Sexist Society
In darkness, my back presses the shivery earth-- with the old bone of an animal, I love myself.
---
My wrist could be slashed, I would feel nothing.
make you say and think, to be mine, mind, my valentine,
Beautiful cannibals are eating me.
Innocent infants, they hung about my neck
hearts beat fast beneath their snowsuits.
I should have known when they carried only the heads of dolls in the grocery carts. Roasting caterpillars over open fires, pulling claws from crayfish was child's play. 4 Now with the skeleton of me left--
Her sweet pearl brooch turns rag doll left out in the blood-rain: sodden muscle blooming
sun gods with long oaken arms stand in ice-water--
vines thick as tree trunks, covering mountains--
I beg for divorce the way one dying of cancer begs for morphine.
---
The eagle flies under my dress, flutters between my thighs:
I want to find the scariest ride and ride it alone.
At my ankle, a bracelet of tin, two hearts entwined, burns to bone, and the world turns flat
no, Lord, not thinking of You at all, but rather how in need of loosening lay my bones
-----------
slide beneath your covers smelling of honey, dripping of salt-- I bring the razor.
tonight to jerk off or recall me,
she's opened like a purse knitted unknitted vacuumed & scraped hooked like a fish & told "The cervix has no nerve ends..."
the shotgun jerks toward the cotton tail of the frozen female
a slash of catgut stitches
you're all back issues of Vogue a catalogue of info on how to fuck our fathers on how to o.d. on barbs stick heads into ovens lie on a street in Chinatown-- one eye shot out
To make me tear the husband from my neck like a cross turned green
Blood, when I swallowed him, I swallowed diamonds that sank & sank
Blood, I'm as caught on your cross as any farm girl who wakes in sulfur & haste, begging mercy for the hand up her skirt during church
in an old Buick: the smell of rubber,
the scooping of ovaries of still-closed eyes yet why if that's right do you now tomgirl in boots chase the Toms rush the tiger lillies rub against us singing
1 baby 2 though nine years younger your red beard makes you the father I never had
you're my boyfriend I'm eleven, a girl
I know my most valuable part: the soft fur at the base of my belly-- ripe for skinning
I'm learning to love the stains I leave on motel sheets
penetrate my cunt stuffed with shards of real China left from my mother's broken life
---
"What holds women back from widespread homosexuality? ... To be loved by a woman would mean to be loved by someone as inferior as oneself." -Una Stannard, Women in Sexist Society
In darkness, my back presses the shivery earth-- with the old bone of an animal, I love myself.
---
My wrist could be slashed, I would feel nothing.
make you say and think, to be mine, mind, my valentine,
Beautiful cannibals are eating me.
Innocent infants, they hung about my neck
hearts beat fast beneath their snowsuits.
I should have known when they carried only the heads of dolls in the grocery carts. Roasting caterpillars over open fires, pulling claws from crayfish was child's play. 4 Now with the skeleton of me left--
Her sweet pearl brooch turns rag doll left out in the blood-rain: sodden muscle blooming
sun gods with long oaken arms stand in ice-water--
vines thick as tree trunks, covering mountains--
I beg for divorce the way one dying of cancer begs for morphine.
---
The eagle flies under my dress, flutters between my thighs:
I want to find the scariest ride and ride it alone.
At my ankle, a bracelet of tin, two hearts entwined, burns to bone, and the world turns flat
no, Lord, not thinking of You at all, but rather how in need of loosening lay my bones