Poems to ring through your head
Here are a couple of poems that I really like:
Instructions for a Body
by Marty Mcconnell
Praise the miracle body: the odd,
And undeniable mechanics of hand,
Hundred-boned foot, perfect stretch of tendon.
Praise the veins that river these wrists
Praise the prolapsed valve in a heart
Praise the scars marking a gall bladder absent
Praise the rasp and rattle of functioning lungs
Praise the pre-arthritic ache of elbows and ankles
Praise the lifeline sectioning a palm
Praise the photographic pads of fingertips
Praise the vulnerable dip at the base of a throat
Praise the muscles surfacing on an abdomen
Praise these arms that carry babies and anthologies
Praise the leg hairs that sprout and are shaved
Praise the ass that refuses to shrink or be hidden
Praise the cunt that bleeds and accepts,
Bleeds and accepts
Praise the prominent ridge of nose
Praise the strange convexity of ribcage
Praise the single hair that insists on growing from a right areola
Praise the dent where the mole was clipped from the back of a neck
Praise these inner thighs brushing
Praise these eyelashes that sometimes turn inward
Praise these hips preparing to spread into a grandmother’s skirt
Praise the beauty of the freckle on the first knuckle of a left little finger
We’re gone, in a blizzard of seconds,
Love the body human while we’re here,
A gift of minutes on an evolving planet,
A country in flux.
Give thanks,
For bone and dirt,
And the million things that will kill us someday,
Motion and the pursuit of happiness,
No guarantees.
Give thanks,
For chaos theory,
Ecology,
Common sense that says,
We are web,
A planet in balance or out,
That butterfly in tokyo setting off thunderstorms in Iowa,
Tell me you don’t matter
To a universe that conspired to give you such a tongue,
Such rhythm, or rhythmless hips,
Such opposable thumbs,
Give thanks,
Or go home a waste of spark.
Speak, or let the maker take back your throat,
March, or let the creator rescind your feet,
Dream, or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind.
This is your warning,
This, your birthright / do not let
this universe regret you
Spine
by Rachel McKibbens and Marty McConnell
Deliver me into the mouth of temptation,
and Lord let the teeth be sharp.
Love, I wanna kiss you until we forget our middle names.
Want you to bite your name across my ass in cursive,
Wanna go down on you in dead stop traffic on the FDR while truckers watch.
Blame all the wrong books I read at 13,
Blame the truth for how dark it gets,
Blame the bite down , the pinned wrists.
Let the one who brings the candle also bring the wax,
Let it make an altar of my back,
Let the hand that tilts the flame go slow, Dearest.
Here it is,
I wasn't raised right, but I don't need a Daddy,
Don't want some god damn gentleman romance,
Its for showoffs.
Roses, a waste of nature in your fists,
I just want a dirty little step-brother to crawl into the attic with.
There is more than one kind of fist, Lord,
Let this one unfold, inside,
Let the edge of pain appear like its own God,
I never said I was well/good,
Like vanity in reverse,
You got the guts to be ugly,
I will get down on my knees,
I will pray to you.
Love, give me a man with riverbed skin,
A woman with freckles for breakfast,
A mouth sounding continents,
An amazon asleep in California.
Let the high and righteous keep their single beds,
We were born in blood, screaming mad and lonely,
We were real back then, it’s so cruel how we forget,
That kind of honesty takes year to perfect,
So lets get practicing.
Carve my crooked name above your heart,
I’ll pull you in deep and hard until our ribcages spark,
Making babies on the kitchen floor.
Making sure you never look at
cucumbers,
beer bottles,
TV remotes
The same way, again.
Wanna name my dildo after the woman we both want to do so by the time she falls into our bed,
Wwe’re used to calling her name.
I’m all out of permission, quit asking.
I want to take it from me,
Smash and ransack,
Knock it over,
Let’s fuck like two pigs being dragged to slaughter.
I wanna fuck you so loudly the neighbors cum in their sleep.
Wanna do things to you that are only legal because no one has ever thought to pass laws against them.
Lover, if you’re willing to go to prison for the shit you do to me,
I promise, I will never turn you in.
This skin will be the first to go,
So let me suck you down to dust,
In the back of a New York City yellow cab,
In a truck stop shower in Memphis,
Under the table of a diner along I-95,
Down deep into the afterlife,
Six feet of dirt can't hold us down.
With flies chewing at our heats,
We'll build houses just to haunt,
Until saints regret their deaths,
Until or bodies are bent into permanent benedictions of sweat.
Welcome,
I've got a big juicy spine you can hang your coat on.