Our Ticklish Subjects Theme - Page 1
27 poets contributed to this project. Read their varied interpretations and expressions on the theme of Ticklish Subjects below:
On this page: poems by Lyn Lifshin, John B. Lee, Johnmichael Simon, Iris Dan, Patrick Osada, Daniel Klawitter, Meg Eden
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The following works are copyright © 2009. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the authors.
Lyn Lifshin
Lyn Lifshin has written more than 125 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A, and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library. Lyn Lifshin has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lyn is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. For her absolute dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for managing to survive on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution, Lifshin has earned the distinction "Queen of the Small Presses." She has been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as "a modern Emily Dickinson."
Not Quite Spring
Baby, you know I get high
on you, come back with me
whispering in her ear.
It was all she could do to say
no, spring leaves budding,
his hand on her breast,
crocus smell and
everything unfolding.
She gasping I want, I
would but instead hurrying
back to the windowless room
where she locks the heavy door.
Lemons are rotting on her pillow,
she studies her nipples,
nyloned crotch in mirror
then hugs her huge body to sleep
Cat Callahan
being fat until
that spring, I still
felt fat on Main St
in my town but
not when the science
fair went north,
Burlington for 3 days,
I met the kind of
long haired boy I
hadn’t. The photograph
with my eyes huge,
how the cop downstairs
groaned when he screamed
in with that Ford.
Relatives squirmed at
his name. By June I
unbuttoned my sweater,
wriggling in a back
seat near Champlain
Al Martino’s Oh My Love
I’ve hungered for so
the pink check dress
wrinkling a long time
as things inside
unchained were saying
yes, yes tho I didn’t
Fitzi in the Yearbook
grin muffled but
sneaky, slithering
out like his penis
did in the Drive In
a June before I could
imagine anything so
slippery sliding up,
let alone inside
me after months of
Saturdays in my
mother’s grey apartment,
my sister giggling
behind the couch,
a tongue pressing
between lips should
have been a warning in
the blue Chevy I felt
he was all whale
crashing with his
now you’ve done
this to me, you have
to, everything in
me sand he
collapsed on
In Spite of his Dangling Pronoun
He was really her favorite
student, dark and just
back from the army with
hot olive eyes, telling her of
bars and the first
time he got a piece of
ass in Greece or was it
Italy and drunk on some strange
wine and she thought
in spite of his dangling
pronoun (being twenty four and
never screwed but in her
soft nougat thighs) that he
would be a
lovely experience.
So she shaved her legs up high
and when he came
talking of foot notes she
locked him tight in her
snug black file cabinet where
she fed him twice a day and
hardly anyone noticed
how they lived among bluebooks
in the windowless office
rarely coming up for sun or the
change in his pronoun. Or the
rusty creaking chair
or that many years later
they were still going to town in
novels she never had time to finish
Lust Blowing Under the Door, Bright as Straw
Your smile’s like sun
flowers he said
as tho
embarrassed his
hands were
pressing
awkwardly the
ring on his
second finger
close to her
eyes
from that room
a wheat sea
lust
blew under the
door bright
as straw
and his warm
parts on
her belly
those small
bones that changed her
small
bones to water
And not even
knowing
his name
until later
when the floor fell
the room
turned into a
painting
and the paint cracked
Mustache
I was thinking
of it this
morning, those
marvelous hairs that
curl around your words
and how they smelled with
frost all over
in the mountains
And yes especially of that
time on the floor
looking like the
middle part of a thick
leggy bug I could
just see
above my belly, moist and
floating up
asked
is this
making your blood glow
John B. Lee
John B. Lee's work has appeared internationally in over 500 publications. He has over 60 prestigious awards to his credit including being the only two-time winner of the People's Poetry Award and winner of the prestigious $10,000 Candian Literary Award for poetry (CBC Radio/Saturday Night Magazine). He has over 40 books in print. A recipient of letters of praise from both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, he was made Poet Laureate of Brantford in perpetuity in 2005.
Watching tv
I am standing
on the broken bridge
overlooking the lip of water
washing over the edge
of a shallow falls
where in that short height of the Silver Lake Lynn
the console
of a tossed-away television
lies sunken
in the slow rush, I am watching
its empty green vacant-glass reflection
wet with heaven
I am, as one might say,
watching tv
its prong and chord
thrust in the flow
like a stone-caught snake
essing with all
the black energy of something dying
something serpentine drowning
in the will of the water
and I
think of tear-washed paper
the unlacing of wet words
the loss of original ink
the dumbing off of sentient sorrow
the blurring to beauty of an over-sad hand
and how
one evening in a warm house
this imaginary window must have
bloomed blue and gone blank
like a dream startled away by the hissing of rain
and one awakening sleeper
as here
under the heavy
and radiant result of weather
it sat
silting backwards
unable to box itself over
the ridge
with all the purposeless inertia
of once purposeful things
it had perhaps
brought home both comedy
and war and had been
both loud with laughter
and quiet in the dark parlor of some
pine-scented orange-and-grey oleander
of Christmas
but here it has been locked
in the damp paralysis
of this relentless river
wanting only to plunge onward
through the ceaseless
urgency of the channel
out into the larger lake
but like a ghost under grass
like moonlit refractions of midnight
like oak shadow
and all the artlessness and otherness
of come-clear stars
dulled by streetlights
and dimmed by the glow of lived-in houses
I cannot
risk the brief illusion
of reified memory
on this stone-real desk
this poem might suffice
if the words weren’t language
and the language
weren’t breath
Finding a Used Condom on the Lynn River Trail
my fox terrier pup Sarge
sniffing the weeds grown green wild
along the trail
where we’d gone looking for water lilies
too late in the year
found and plucked and half-gulped
the phlegmy remains of a nearly filled rubber condom
which I, in fear of my dog choking to death on that second
far-less pleasurable peristalsis
thrust my fingers into his fiercely gobbling mouth
and drew it forth in one wet slobber
tossing it far away thinking “there, that is that”
and however repugnant, however ugly and raw
I’d saved him from gagging on latex
and the rheumy flavour of men
and so, on we went
down to the mud-gripped water
drawn into lazy flow
where the sky slept brown
like the pallid dreaming of an old man’s nap
my mind haunted by the half-swallowed
appetite of my little dog
that pup hunger I’d interrupted with one contaminated hand
but I soon forgot and was mosquito busy in the shady hum of the Lynn
until upon turning around
that damned dog found what I had thrown
milkening into the shrubbery
and he was quick-gobbling
as if he’d been thinking of nothing else
only briefly though enthusiastically distracted by other things
such as
sparrow worry and cat spoor and the buzz and flurry
of a blue-winged damsel fly
and twice was more than enough
to rescue that bulbousity
which he was trying to dry swallow
as if he were following the serious instructions
of a gut god
and this were the most sacred sacrament
of all small dogs
but I gripped and pulled and flung
so it came snotting down
through sumac and skunk cabbage
like the milting ooze
of a wounded angel
how dare a poem contain
what overflows the language of hands
I am a Work of Art Do not Touch Me
“Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father …”
John 20:17 King James Bible
on the street in Port Dover
there stands a porcelain pig
painted nose-to-tail
in pastels of the town
it wears a paper saddle saying
“I am a work of art do not touch me”
and this is where the war begins
like little whorls of corner winds
that build a swirling storm
against the breaking world
‘noli me Tangere’
I see your thumbs, dear reader
I feel your mind
it smudges ink
the dog-eared thought
that bends the page
or blots a turn of phrase
with butter on the skin much like
the monk whose candle dripped
upon a manuscript
whose Latin changed the Greek
‘meta mon apton’
whose eventually English fire
burned poor Tyndale, kindle-boned
and gave his voice to smoke
the plough-boy’s harrow
gulls the land behind a smoldering earth
he understands the worm within the word
it leads us here
so bikers say aloud
with polished chrome unto a passing crowd
“touch me—and I’ll fuck you up!”
this hog upon the walk
but Googles erudition
backwards from a local brush
two thousand Easters
and ten thousand petroglyphs
ago a weed dipped stick gave death a cave
the sharpest red there is
the flame tip of a killed beast’s blood
what gentles hunger to a sacrament
I sin against decorum
and drag my shadow on a painted ham
and on a painted hock
like angels on a crimson door
where everything
that flattens bread
or crushes grapes
gives cruelty a pulse to nail
a pair of crooked feet
to build a hammer’s heaven from
Johnmichael Simon
Johnmichael Simon has lived in Israel since 1963. He has published three solo books of poems and two collaborations with partner Helen Bar-Lev. His poetry has been awarded numerous prizes and honorable mentions and is published widely in print and website collections. He is the chief editor of Cyclamens and Swords publishing www.cyclamensandswords.com and webmaster of Voices Israel group of poets in English http://www.freewebs.com/voicesisrael/. Johnmichael’s personal poetry website is http://johnmichaelsimon.webs.com/
Tainted Entanglement
It was always like that after he came home
from his business trips with the same far-away eyes
the same two-for-the-price-of-one toilet water from
the Duty Free, the same black underwear that he
never used at home because she liked him to wear only white.
They would have the same conversations into the night,
endless negotiations of probing and unvoiced allegations
which later he would re-live, holding them up
to the light of his mind like wine glasses after drying
inspecting them for any tiny unnoticed speck or stain
There was something about the questions she asked
throwing them into court in an almost casual manner
like new tennis balls from the pockets of her shorts;
something about her spiky handwriting that looked like
a spider had crawled over the page, and about which the
graphologist he took it to for analysis remarked that
she was manipulative and hyper-critical.
They had sex on Friday mornings at half-past ten
or sometimes a little later while he waited outside
her bedroom door for her to complete her
exercise routine; years later after the divorce
he would think about those exercises, lying there
legs stretched backwards behind her head, the outline of
her crotch taut against her tights while he fidgeted
through telephone conversations with her friends,
discussions about obscure political trivia.
Much later he came across a poem he had
written to her and a tiny silver heart on
a thin chain that she had buried in the depths
of a drawer, then returned to him
because she didn’t understand it
and because she only wore gold jewelry.
He re-read the awkward phrases apologizing
for misdemeanors he had never committed,
begging for a grain of affection;
for the hundredth time he realized how
completely he had never understood her,
perhaps he should call and find out how she was,
a lot of the time these days
he really missed her
The Big Secret
One of them (which one I’ve forgotten)
once said he’d read somewhere
that if you focus just this way
on a keyhole, or if you drink a whole bottle
in one gulp, or keep your head
underwater and count eighty s l o w l y
past the point when your lungs scream…
Anyway we were all sitting around
in Bengali’s drinking tequila when it
happened, I mean really happened,
(none of that shit about illusions
there were sixteen of us mostly skeptics)
when the wall fan started spitting blood,
mashed flesh, scraps of bone
splattering us with gore, then water
came pouring under the door which
burst open like a hold in a sinking ship
and we were instantly fighting for our
lives in pink liquid rising to a smidgeon
under the ceiling
Just think of it, he said, the possibility,
you could send someone from here to
there instantly, it’s an ancient Egyptian spell
(he’d read it in a book on the pyramids,
or was it about a shaman thrown into a tank
of Piranhas who’d miraculously survived)
Anyway, I haven’t heard from any of them
since, not a single word, so I must assume
that it’s a big secret – they all keeping their
mouths shut for so long. I mean, if the exact
technique got out somehow, everyone
would be using it
Conversations at an Autopsy
So wasteful these suicides
no consideration for society
Did you enjoy the concert?
the quintet was quite delicious
look at these breasts, absolutely perfect
what a waste
Hello dear
dinner at eight, I hadn’t forgotten
an incision from here to here
should suffice, here they are
esophagus, trachea, stomach, liver
perfect, what a waste
look at this pubic hair
it’s the fashion these days
and the tattoo
No he didn’t use
the Stradivarius couldn’t get
insurance or something but
the cellist, quite remarkable
did you see her legs
and her tone, perfect
rigor mortis
it changes the quality of the skin
makes it look like a statue
here it is, yes I think
this is it
Yes dear pick
up caviar from the delicatessen
and pâté, sure, truffles, Roquefort
Chardonnay
Stravinsky’s on the
twenty sixth, see you then
the cause of all the tragedy
What dear? I love you too
What a waste, all that money
on food, clothing, education
love’s labors lost
yes I guess love has something to do with it
Supermarket Self Image
His dexterity with wieners was quite extraordinary
eliciting a shower of encores from the audience
composed mainly of diaphanous underwear models
who brought him bouquets, boxes of chocolates,
proposals of marriage, and one, the daughter
of a chain store magnate, offered him a contract
to star in a movie about bratwurst and pickles,
the German, she assured him, could be dubbed in later
Only his wife did not appreciate him
she wanted to intellectualize, discuss Greek mythology
at one in the morning when he wished only to sleep
Shaking her off, he fell into a watery dream he’d
often had before, standing over a pool,
that turned into a hall of mirrors,
he flexed himself, struck obscene poses
that leered back at him from every corner, every
angle, now tall, now fat, curved forwards and
backwards, now round, thin, twisted, elongated,
replicating him endlessly in a hundred lurid variations
of frankfurter, knockwurst, braunschweiger, biershinken,
a grinning satire, twisting, dancing in chorus line
copies and clones, a can-canning clown, performing
baloney push ups in devilish abandon to the tumult
of his own applause
Nightly crowned monarch of ardor
he regarded himself—
unique, triumphant, desirable
…Narcissus of the delicatessen counter
Iris Dan
Iris Dan was born in Bukowina, Romania, in a family of Holocaust survivors. She grew up bilingual (German and Romanian), than studied Romance languages at the University of Bucharest, graduating with an M.A. in linguistics. She has been living in Israel since 1980. She is married, has a grown daughter, and works (quite happily) as a translator from and into a number of languages. From her (existential and professional) Babel Tower she sees the Mediterranean. She has written poetry for as long as she can remember, never publishing any, in the last 15 or 20 years, in English only. Recently she has begun to send her poems on their own way and has been published or is forthcoming in the Voices Israel Anthology, Magnapoets, Poetic Portal, Subtletea, and Poetic Diversity.
The Feldenkreis Lesson
I. The Mirror Room
The wall in front of us
is covered with our own reflections
while the wall on the left
is covered with Degas girls.
They sit decorously collapsed
over their tutus
accept flowers
pose for the painter.
Particularly graceful
is the one tying her shoe:
profile and hands meeting ankle
in a precise triangle.
They don't bother with us
They are smugly aware
of filling no much and no less space
than was assigned to them.
We try not to see. We try
to push our bodies back
into molds in which they have
never really fitted.
We pull our stomachs in.
We try to create some space
between painful vertebrae
where the cartilage is eroded.
We lower our eyes in shame.
So this is what age is:
weak flesh unable to obey
the orders of the willing spirit
and not only in matters
of sinful temptation.
We are grateful when
told to lie down on the mattress.
II. Shulamit
Shulamit has no time for the Degas girls.
(Nor for us, if truth be told).
Shulamit creates her own mold as she moves.
Like a proud prow, her belly pushes the space,
and the space respectfully bends.
The wild grey strands of her hair
swell in the wind like sails.
Woe to her who dares to put her mattress
on Shulamit's place; woe to her
who mistakenly steps on Shulamit's mattress.
Then a storm breaks out; the walls move.
The mirrors threaten to break.
We hate her. We want to kill her.
Now that she's dead, the space has shrunk.
We have been pushed even closer to the mirrors.
On the face of one of the Degas girls
a drop of sweat begins to blur the lines.
III. The Feldenkreis Lesson
the teacher says
imagine your pelvic bones
broad and flat on the mattress
moving them as told
I smile, remembering their names:
ilium, ischium, pubis;
I remember the biology lab
the skeleton propped up the wall
not at all
the metrosexual kind you imagine
having dropped dead in a gym
but quite disreputable
losing his teeth
his pelvis held together with a rusty wire
and yet, presiding with some panache
over his domain of pinned butterflies,
segmented worms, jarred frogs
and other assorted horrors
(not entirely harmless either:
still capable of giving you tetanus).
I understand now (or do I):
my body is the only home
that I can truly call mine
even the rib-caged bird
feels temporarily at peace.
Dendrology
The soothing voice of the tape
tells me to imagine
a perfectly safe landscape,
then a tree of my liking,
probably symbolizing the soul
I try an oak and it promptly
turns into a thin-lipped officer,
his chest adorned with oak leaves
I summon a beech, then a birch
and remember that a group of beeches
forms a Buchenwald
a group of birches a Birkenau
The Lebanese cedar?
It has been burning
for a long time now
every now and then directing
one of his flaming branches
toward my house
Remains the olive tree
but mindless thugs
from among my neighbors
are hiding behind it
throwing stones and shooting
and equally mindless thugs
of my own people
immediately chop it to pieces
That’s why guided imagination
isn’t always effective
in fighting anxiety attacks.
Bulimia
Secretly engaging in the (here, now)
ultimate sin. Nothing sybaritic
about this secrecy. Hidden
behind the fridge door. On the run
with a bag of croissants.
They must not catch me eating
they know that under
this fake slim appearance
I am grotesquely overweight
monstrously obese.
Soul relegated to the (here, now)
lowliest of places. Gastric acids
consuming it, it regenerating
like Prometheus’ liver. Nothing heroic
about this regeneration.
Whiffs of serotonine everywhere
sweet, smooth, buttery, flaky,
promising soothing. Fruity, pungent
promising enjoyment. Milky, foamy
promising oblivion.
Grease entering my bloodstream,
fruit turning to alcohol, soul amidst
decomposing chocolate,
teeming fermentation worms.
Then purging.
Acids burning my esophagus. Again
in hiding in one of those places
Catharsis, they call it. It's supposed to be
about terror and pity. They said nothing
about shame and disgust.
Temptation
I’ll show you, he said,
how to fix your world
how to restore it
to its primordial purity
this fabric chokes,
interstices clogged,
warp and weft deformed
by dead squamous cells,
tears, sweat, saliva, semen,
mucus and menstrual blood,
domestic soot and radioactive dust
I’ll show you how
by a simple work of magic
you can redeem
restore to its intended beauty
this fabric, your world, the world
there is no vice, no evil
dirt is the only sin
cleanliness is next to godliness
cleanliness is godliness
you will be like the gods
for a very affordable price
look at it now, he said,
not only clean, but immaculate
freed of all foreign matter,
warp and weft taut,
vibrating with vigor
pores inhaling and exhaling
wrap yourself in it
take in the never decaying
fragrance of freshness
the primordial fragrance preceding
the fragrance of rain and of flowers
the fragrance of love
the fragrance of sleep
and now behold this quintessence of white
underlying and holding together
all the whites of your language
all the whites beyond it
silvery white, ivory white,
cloudy white, chalky white,
milky white, galactic white,
foamy white, feathery white,
snowy white, pearly white,
Persil white!
Patrick Osada
Patrick B. Osada is a retired Headteacher living in Warfield, Berkshire, England. He works as an editor, writes reviews of poetry for magazines and is a member of the Management Team for SOUTH Poetry Magazine. His first collection, Close to the Edge was published in 1996 & won the prestigious ROSEMARY ARTHUR AWARD. His second collection, Short Stories : Suburban Lives and his current volume, Rough Music, have been published in England by BLUECHROME. Patrick’s work has been widely published in magazines, anthologies and on the internet. His poetry has been broadcast on national & local radio. Information about his work can be found at : www.poetry-patrickosada.co.uk
Dragon's Teeth
...So, to his next task, Jason turned.
He set about to plant the field
and, where the dragon's teeth were sown,
a phantom army sprang to life:
each man a soldier, fully armed,
and ready to take up the fight.
To beat them single-handedly
was far too much for any man,
but Jason knew he would prevail
and, working to Medea's plan,
from cover (hidden by a bush)
into the field he hurled large stones.
Each man he struck became incensed,
accusing neighbours of attack -
and in no time a battle raged:
red mist, hot blood...into the black.
Another field - Afghanistan -
where dragon's teeth, by Taliban,
are sown in every village there.
Our modern Jasons, Daves and Johns
Are truly brave and just as strong
as any of those Ancient Greeks...
yet battle on with no real plan -
Medea's cunning is not theirs.
Insurgents, like a rising tide,
spring up across the countryside:
there seems to be an extra man
for every fallen Taliban.
This is a war that can't be won:
no golden apples of the sun,
no black gold or a trophy fleece -
just politicians in retreat.
Fresh Figs
The best way to eat figs is from the tree
when ripe, pendulous, breast-like fruit hangs down –
just weigh them in your hands and gently squeeze
and take them, nearly bursting, soft and brown.
Like gynaecologists some slice each fig,
halving the ripe fruit with such precision,
they scoop the inside out with shiny spoons –
spend ages contemplating each incision.
I think the Turkish Figs are best caressed :
you take them, holding stalk end at the top,
then gently slide a finger down below
to open up that tender honey spot.
Next, gently prise soft fleshiness apart
exposing that moist pinkness to your tongue,
enjoy yourself as honeyed juices flow
into your mouth and down your chin it runs…
Like Pavlov’s dog, when figs come into view,
I always seem to conjure thoughts of you.
Her Diamond Man
Ashes turned into diamonds.
A US firm says it will turn your cremated ashes into a diamond
for the loved ones you leave behind. BBC News
Employed as nurse, she soon became
Companion in those empty days
When family said they had no time.
She quickly found new ways to please,
Catering to his every need
And learnt to ask about the past.
He told about his diamond days -
The deals & how a fortune’s made -
His squabbling wives & children’s greed.
Constant companion, bright new friend,
She soon was indispensable.
On summer walks she took his arm
And wore short shorts - he loved her legs -
And she became his Golden Girl.
She laughed and said, “Dear Daniel,
Then you must be my Diamond Man.”
Such happy days - but, oh, so brief -
For suddenly, he up and died.
The family were outraged the will had changed -
Soon got their lawyers & the press engaged :
Young totty more than companion
To octogenarian diamond baron…
But, after all the fuss, she still shone through.
The new life style, she’d taken in her stride,
But something deep inside was missing him.
Surfing the net one day she found
“LifeGem ..the perfect way to embrace
Your loved one’s memory day by day” -
“How neat, and so appropriate.”
Daniel Klawitter
A resident of Denver, CO, since 1999, Daniel Klawitter is an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church and a full-time community organizer who works on issues of economic development and workers' rights. He has a BA in Religion Studies from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and a Master of Divinity degree from Iliff School of Theology in Denver. His poetry has appeared in Sacramental Life, Quietmoutain: New Feminist Essays, Blue Collar Review, The People's Tribune, Indelible Companions (A chapbook supporting the Friends of the Animal Center Foundation in Iowa), and Struggle: A Journal of Proletarian Literature.
A Hairy Meditation
As my hairline recedes and retreats from my head
other more rebellious hairs have instead
sprouted in much stranger locations.
There are now spiders
nesting on my nipples.
Stalks of spiky thistles
bristle on my ears
and a fearful forest of bamboo is growing from my nose!
This biological joke
(I can only suppose)
is a way for the universe
to poke fun at human pride.
And yet—
I still feel like the same person inside
this aging skin.
It’s the mirror that lies!
It’s the mirror that sins!
Reflecting back in my wrinkled eyes
a man I am beginning to recognize
as my father.
Ah cruel Time!
No on can escape your prophetic power
so why even bother?
There’s no sense in blaming.
Still, you’d think I’d get more sympathy from my wife,
who finds my hairy transformation
highly entertaining.
But I’m not worried about her
my hairy and hairless brothers!
For one day soon woman will look in the mirror
and there
will see
her mother.
A Poet Playing Doctor
It is hard to know what to say—
how to use the old words
in new ways?
Harder still to touch you
where you live untouched
by language grown tired
limping about on crutches.
So I speak truth to power
and kindness to strangers.
You may consider these words
a healing incantation
for the resurrection of wilted flowers
and the danger of misinterpretation.
But please, do not think me crude
if I desire to be nude with you.
It’s just that with all your prose clothes on,
we will have trouble diagnosing
the naked, poetic truth.
And if you want proof…
Well, the proof is in the showing.
It’s the crucial difference, say,
between understanding
and truly knowing.
So turn down the lights
and lock all the doors.
I’ll show you mine,
if you show me yours.
Eating Light Poetry
You like your poems funny
short and sweet—
like a Hershey kiss
instead of meat.
An appetizer
of words that rhyme—
(not overcooked prose
that takes up time).
So enjoy this nibble,
this little taste—
of this shortest poem
I wrote in haste.
Runaway Muse
I will try to write today
though nothing may come…
the words with which
I’ve wrestled of late
are hard won
and bitter to the tongue.
Like being tickled too long—
then sick to my stomach
choking on withered grass—
these words are so wretched
they sear my soul to silence
and coat my throat
like burnished brass.
The pen is clutched in my hand
like a frantic, fumbling madman
farming in the sand for inspiration!
(Yet all my fields lie fallow).
This is the best that I can offer
to my muse upon her altar
so light a candle,
say a prayer—
and try again tomorrow.
Meg Eden
Meg Eden has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Claremont Review and Ancient Paths. She has won various writing awards, including AACC’s Marjorie Flack Award, Scholastic Writing and Arts’ Gold Key Award, and Blue Mountain Arts’ Poetry Contest. She is currently working with a literary agent with the hopes of publishing novel works.
pink
classroom table,
tickle me pink crayons all
lined in a row, sorted, from
lightest to darkest, who
gets embarrassed the easiest.
wonders what
tickle me pink really
looks like in life, but
doesn’t ask, already feeling
fingers crawl up her sleeves.
tickle fights
she has silent dreams of his
fingers on her skin,
sensuously innocent
forcing laughs from
hurting lips.
huddled in a corner,
balled up, children call her
fat.
wrapped in continual jokes like bows,
tangled limbs
like limp strings, searching for and denying
weakness.
bunched up in
self defense, small, shy
like the day they first met,
she stretches her neck out
and she doesn’t look so big.
lithe and lovely she
spreads herself like a starfish,
opening herself to fear, brokenness,
laughter.
she does not think about these things,
only that she wants to be touched.
Go to Ticklish Subjects Page 2
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