Sapphic 1
How will I write Sapphic poetry
for though I am a woman, loving women
my love is a man’s!
A man’s solicitous desire! I scratch my throat.
My voice goes husky as I say your name,
I measure the yard with a footlong hotdog,
but I fuck up the numbers
because the sausage softly bends
and I get distracted pressing it against the exterior molding.
My love was invented to secure our infant housing
and every time we touch
I want to write a check.
Not necessarily to you but somebody.
I am so dumb. I am so lucky.
I am certain I am overlooking my uselessness.
None of this is true!
My love is a fruit!
I am just like Sappho, bearing your loss
to a wedding. And I am assured
of my uselessness, here
is its catalogue. The yard is trees
a long lap of trees across a woody forest!
Peeling down the sea!
And I am speaking to you
in this group of our peers
yearning, and I know my yearning is sonorous!
Because I am not trying to take you from anybody.
If you want to go
all I can do is sing you hotly.
So that you will look for me when your water breaks.
So when birth pain takes you out,
you’ll see my face in blackness.
When you hear your name, elsewhere
my voice will sing it lightly under.
[You’ll name your baby Sophaikos.]
[The fruit of my invention seeds its sugar in your dreams.]
Sapphic 4
the draped plant also wears
its hair to the left
I like your cascade
a mer feeling
I have never been so sensible
to long hair on a woman
I have never been so hurt
by long hair on the left
when you wind your rivulet
to the side
and show your neck
I look at it
Sapphic 20
Women will always have shoulders
they won’t always be women
they’ll have shoulders
beloveds will always
turning a shoulder
before light of when that
breaks through what
drink water from a seen-through cylinder
her shape a shape against
a beloved will turn
water from her shoulder
why do I like to be across the room
I am sick with love
it has spoilt my pleasure
I do not want to travel
or cast a shadow
I do not want to summer in the city
I only want each day to sign
the possibility of her arrival
like a tanned edge of toast
signifies crispness