now who
the fuck
is
Tonya?

Tonya by Cathy Calkins

Poem longer than your life, lines straighter than your limbs. Bald, pale unresponsive body bent in contractured pain, unformed bones under aged skin, perfection contorted.

Names recalled, faces in past cribs becoming your fact, each torment inflicted on you linked to their wounds, each act of compassionate harm an act of penance a nurse's hands should never have to make.

You could not see, could not hear my comforting—suffered each hurt in feeble agony. Your mother waited for us to dress you in health, to hand her a baby with no need of alchemy. Longing for an end, knowing yours would be the last thorns I thrust into pliant flesh, I dressed each day in mourning cloth.

HA!  you know you suck...don't you. lol.

Tiko

yes but it's always good to be reminded.

gag @ who tonya is.

tiko, thanks for your good mornin' and schedule for the day.

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I think this would be better here.

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I have this strange ache
in my hip, right at the bend
in the back, around the middle
sort of.  It's a cruel kind of pain,
like it's reminding me
of what your legs feel like
after you have sex.

---

Embrace

Decked out in what appears
to be the shirt of the same
pajama-set my 'baby mama'
shipped to me for Christmas,
the Afghani president hugs
the Irani president on the front
page of the New York Times
and raises quite a few more
questions than he answers.

Probably she and his wife just
patronize the same fashionable
men's shop in Kabul, but it is
also conceivable that she gave
all her men the same present,
and Hamid—hiding his smirk in
the photo—is secretly enjoying
the company of the same PFC
who left an infant here with me.



If I am jealous of Ahmadinejad,
as close to Linette's body as she
would be to mine if she were he,
I'm not going to let on except
to say he looks a bit fastidious,
Steve Carell-ish, and Hamid has
the same high-neck haircut as
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon—
and it all gives me the creeps.

I miss Linette, the plain uniform
worn like a sack full of potatoes,
and oh what potatoes they were.
A man in a karakul Good Humor
cap—to think what he might think
of doing with a woman like that
hits me like a thump to the chest.
Tonight I'm going to wear my set,
do some damage in my own bed.

Don't know how to colloborate with that.  Don't even know how to answer it or what to say.  I guess I could speak as woman in a uniform like a sack of potatoes.

Is the woman in your poem a lesbian?  Probably not, I prolly read something wrong.  Do love the last line.  It's a perfect opening for another, but what kind of woman is she?  What nationality.  'Splain me please.

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I forgot what I actually meant to say:

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pass the Strawberry Short Cake
strawberries are sensual
cake yeah
short not so much

---

Women from Afghanistan don't have sex, and definitely don't make love.  They're either raped or abused.  A law was past recently to force Afghan women to have sex with their husbands.  If they don't, or if they complain about abuse or rape, they go to prison.

---

Purple is the Color of the Longing
by David Steinberg


Purple is the color of the longing,
tucked into the folds of pulpy organs
soft and vulnerable.
A finger could pierce like a bullet
this swollen pulse.
An uncaring touch would tear to pieces
the soft fiber of its nest.

Defenseless it hides
in the soft warm dark
safe and alone,
and dreams silently
of the most gentle hands,
      hands that part the flesh with trembling care
           inching open the egg,
      hands that breathe,
           warm and moist,
           attentive to the quietest heartbeats,
      slow patient hands that touch
           with no shadow of demand,
      fingers   that explore hinted textures
           radiating wonder and discovery,
bridges delicate enough to join
      one time
      under the noise of aching lives
the being of one
with the presence of another.
 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© Copyright 2005 by David Steinberg. All rights reserved.

 

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(his erotic poems are pretty awesome)




To Whom It May Concern


Not a word!
The eyes speak in rivers,
      the fingers in trees.
The body has a language all its own:
this time we'll send the interpreter home.

I will open you
      petal by petal
      taking all the time in the world.
I will build with you a slow fire
      stick by stick
      and watch the color of your sunrise.
I will play with the wind of you,
      cover your body with smiles and games,
      promises and fantasies that disappear
      without a trace.
I will stir your secret core,
      witches' brew of potions and incantations
      and feel you simmering, rolling
      floating in my hand.
I will fill you slowly up,
      every crevice and curve,
      watch feel hear smell taste you
      growing full.

And when every part of you is one,
when you are saturated, suspended,
water trembling over the brim,
I will ride with you over the falls
      drown with you
      disappear all boundaries
      tumble over and over
           and over and over
until there is only the spinning dizzy
dance beyond dancing
and the great wave crashing to bits
everything, leaving us
strewn with the seaweed
in the sand and the sun
      to dry.

 



© Copyright 2005 by David Steinberg. All rights reserved.

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---

she was older
and well versed
in the act
but she took him in
like a young girl
welcomes her soldier
home from war

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That's beautiful, C. Both meanings of "she took him in" perfectly at home in this. -T.

I think the line breaks are wrong and make it jerky.  How should they be?