Autumn, My Mistress

She creeps, announced, into your room,
her cold hand pressing against your stomach.
You shiver at her metallic fingertips,
and your fuzzy socks tuck back into the bed.

She brings you a basket of corn,
the last haul, dangling from her arm.
Dirt under her nails, she smells of earth,
the cutting scent of decay and growth.

The night crackles as darkness falls,
dusk giving way to crisp air and burning leaves.
In the distance, the smell of Halloween nights
breaks into candy bits and foreign homes.

Meanwhile, she smirks as she throws
a gray blanket across the sky
and pricks the trees at random
until their crimson bleeds over the green.

–30–

Edit of the first version.

 

The Cat

A cat licks itself,

purring. If I were a cat,

I’d lick myself too.

 

Rush

I thought I was pregnant for the longest time
until my body finally pushed through,
without the pill to tell it what to do.
And then, with the blood came the verse.

You don’t want to read about this.
Not another woman-vagina-menstruation
exposition on art and blood and the life force.
You have to say it like that, all italicized.

But I can’t deny the connection,
the build up of gunk, the old blood
that came more than a week late
in a rush, a desperate run to clean out pipes.

And now here I am, with you disgusted,
my mind thinking in poetry, churning
too fast for my fingers to keep up,
to expel the thoughts too long bottled in.

 

No Reply

from: christine.borden@gmail.com
to: you@email.com
date: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:04 AM
subject: new poem

Your name,

I don’t have a journal or a personal blog
detailing the inanities of my life.
But sometimes I send emails
to people I know will never respond
just to know that somewhere out there
I am being read.

Christine

 

They Laughed When I Read My Poem

They laughed when I read my poem. It wasn’t funny. I said a bad word.
I was talking about feeling alone even in the company of others.
This poem is not a poem about my insecurities
as a poet as a writer as a woman as a person.
But that laugh echoed in the room, a room like a poem
closing in on the hollow laugh. Awkward laugh. It struck me.
I stared back, into the empty space from which it came
and read to it, until it could see what I saw, the nothingness and the depth.

-30-

In reference to this poem.

 

The End of September

She creeps, announced, into your room,
her cold hand pressing against your stomach.
You shiver at her touch, pull for the sheet.
Fuzzy socks tuck back into the bed.

She brings you a basket of corn,
the last haul, dangling from her arm.
Dirt under her nails, she smells of earth,
the cutting scent of decay and growth.

The night crackles as darkness falls,
dusk giving way to crisp air and burning leaves.
In the distance, the smell of Halloween nights
breaks into candy bits and foreign homes.

-30-

Not sure I like the title, but I feel this will become a growing collection every year, along with this previous poem.

 

Your Knees

A flash of knobby knees

against the darkness of the night.

White sheen, alabaster skin

striking between black and black.

A contrast, a beauty–

would this be the same

if she were darker?

Ashy brown caps,

blue ebony,

burnt caramel,

fetish in color?

Perhaps it was just the peek of flesh,

unexpected and unawares.

 

Breasts

What are breasts but flesh that valleys,

tissue and trough,

a cosine wave across a chest?

 

Your Shoes, v.2

The sheen of your shoes caught my tired eye.
Up your pant leg, past your coat,
I saw through your wrinkles. Your eyes locked on mine,
and bulbous eyeballs swelled against their glass confines.
I lowered my gaze back to the lacquered leather.
You seemed the type to buy these shiny shoes,
one in the habit of slipping them under the hems
of young girls’ skirts, their panties in polish.
They hinted at the dirty pleasure of picking up
women like me in airport bars. You stared,
with hair slicked back and body stiff,
then dared to slip your toe next to mine.
So excuse my revelry –for some will call me clever–
when I stiletto your toe and scallop your immaculate leather.

 

we are not whores

we are so oppressed i once thought it was funny to think that it wasn’t me i was safe but then there we were crying in a room all women all staring blank faced
like when they were staring at me trying to undress trying to hit on me smack that pussy on the street at 2 a.m.  a woman has no business sitting on those concrete steps and in the dark our minds were running but we were there strength in numbers but then why did we feel so exposed to those boring eyes exposed to the night air the man who came to shake our hands only made it worse trying to be nice when he didn’t realize we are so oppressed he is the enemy we must not touch him make eye contact he is what makes us scared grab our purses clutch to our laps they called from the cars fucked with their eyes greedy with lust and power and privilege and possession what could we do but pretend that it would be over it wasn’t uncomfortable this was normal