Sweetly Missing

Climb into it, why not? You’re already in bed.

Instead of saying things to yourself, let the self powder the head, russet coloured slipping, like when girls and boys were kissing in the woods out behind school.  You were always too scared to join them, but now, let that easy pleasure unstitch your brow, oh, isn’t this so nice?  Just the one of us, and lying on our back, still, of their own volition, lift the kites, russet coloured, the girls wear, you wear, gloss that smells, that tastes, of root beer.  The bubbles, russet coloured, in a glass that reads Coca Cola, but backwards in a mirror like a foreign chant, fill with smoke and let go let go your eyes onto your russet cheeks.  Lids, russet coloured, of a piece with the lashes, with the nose, that part where the glasses rose and make things russet coloured.  The evening clothes against your skin, the bed, its frame, everything you did today tomorrow forgotten and left, and fall, like leaves in autumn, russet coloured, and all is same — the rocks, the sand, to the very grain, where ocean laps, is righteous.

In bellied mood, remove attachment to all colours save for russet.  The room is russet, the air is russet.  There is no blood, no crude oil, just a salad of arugula, radish, russet.  No hunger.  No pain.  Even the rain is just one drop, and splashes dry, the hairs upon your head, each a tube of progress to a loosened corset filled with flowers, who all assume the russet, no need to ask, rub their petals and relax in their turgid velvet.  Your toes are safely cordoned little piglets, running stilled and fed, topped off with little cherry caps of nail and fingertips, your lips, a darker russet. The moon, full, gravid, sensuous.  Parting the clouds as she zooms closer to witness you, peering, laid upon a floating barge into the sea, The Russet Sea, unchartered by men, somewhere between Russia and a staircase to the stars, hovering in soft coronas, huddling to catch you, when you fall into their gloaming.

The pillow was your mother’s, cotton soft and fertile, the blankets protective of your downing, the sounds of the outside world in blend of reds and pinks and browns.  The town you reach has spires you can tip toe across, and in a wide leaping freedom soothe each to each. Peach and white and pulse couple round about and russet.  This weightlessness is easy gait to sure reward.  Blessing is spelled sans b, sans letters, everything is warm, the heart eloped from cage and roaming in love’s easy tides. Climb in, why not?  You’re already alive. 

Sara Barnett

speaking only programmed moans

This silence is mine; what’s inside won’t come out. I can’t say I’m too dry; make me wetter. My voice might start another story, one in which he does the things I can’t bring myself to ask for. I’ve been taught to be a doll, speaking only programmed moans. O’s and breaths too staggered and simple to mean anything but fuck. If we’re fucking, skin so close it’s glued, can’t he feel his cock pulling at my canal? From my first lover, I learned not to mind. From my second lover, I learned to mind, but not ask. My third lover asks me to ask, but I can’t. Even though he keeps no secrets, even though he digests my words and is nourished, even though he is delighted by the movement of my mouth and the flicking of spit that comes with speaking, my voice is snared between my teeth. My second throat might vibrate the right sounds, but I’ve been plugged, stopped up with cock, that throat choked. He is watching. I look pleasured. I am, sort of.

Angela Patane
The Truth of the Matter