Paula Kolek


Dream Songs

I.

chiaroscuro lit thin
                                           and young
                                                                   i’m charged, the day charnging across my face

elastic behind my navel
                                                to you, i’m pulled ---------------------------------------pink breath filling
                                                                                                                                                       my mouth my tongue
                                                                                                                                                       drowning in heat
                                                                                                                                                       my eyes tasting orange

                                                                       what is it to seduce
                                                                                           wearing corded muscle on top of skin
                                                                           cancelous bone like lace


                                                                                                               limbic brained pleasure centered
                                                                                                               shame-
                                                                                                               less tender button

                              i rise from purpled actions
                                                                                a dice roll
                                                                                a magic eight
               wake to rotating desire

II.

i know what a god’s anger is –
                                                                  necklace of multicolored heads
                                                                  snowflakes shivered to pieces
                                                                  cacataleptic shadows

                                           if only they listened
                                                                            i would show them water
                but they won’t                won’t
                                                                                         [ they’ll never see it ]


                                                                           only the inside of this damned cabin
                                                                                                               wind whipping through splintered walls
                                                                                     and never a frying pan.



III.

i || yellow moth || girl wingéd
               cover in yellowed field from winging bullets
                                                                                                           my family
                                                                                                           hunting me


i bend a tinfoil star round my head
                                                                  [ my thoughts i own my eyes their eyes ]
                                          when we fight, my father is hulking
                                                                                                           fragile
                                                                           i can take him
                                                                                                           the anger in waves, the
                                                                                  < STOP TELLING ME I HAVE A NICE BODY >

               tentacled maw gobbling mouths
      blazing head decapitated red and fire
                                                                               i can’t save the girl –
                                                                                                                     no savior i
                                                                                                                     save her i
                                                                                                                     can
                                                                                                                             not, she becomes food for them
                                                                       and we are in the keeper’s hands
                              naked in the forest
                                                                     monsters behind flat black trees
                                                                                                                            but mostly it is men
                                                                                                                            in plaid and hunting orange



Paula Kolek is a current MFA poetry candidate at the University of Miami and has recently had a monologue presented in The Krane’s production of Monologues Lingus. Her poems will be published in upcoming issues of Ditch and RECONSTRUCTION: Studies in Contemporary Culture.

 
 
 
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