Kate Siklosi
full moon
darkened sea meets knife
run up your hose, comrades, the night is full
winged eyelets blaring with the embarkation of feckless woman
let the moon crack with your unfettered want
is that the moon rising or are you just happy to see us?
let your mascara run, comrades, with heartsick tilt
for eyes are but holes that have seen the worst
and cheeks so full of vigour, sure as a poisoned church
and each step recalls the slivered difference between stars.
here runs a storm, comrades, a whinny of a spout
the plastic bags caught cold in a tree, we ask the wind to
leave our hair, gild our wings, sharpened like a whetted knife
to make love is to wage more, so flood your coffer with first touches
the breastbone and pelvis open, palms feast on vexed backs.
run out without looking behind, comrades, be sure of your marbled gaze
if ever a snake should hunt you, let your heaps of flesh garb you in surety
your matted fur, a sign of the unbound, a badge of the undone
the snake dares us to be free, as the winds tease the rain
and soon the night falls, the day renews its dialect,
and we lurch knowingly, cautiously, out to sea.
the night women.
while you all slept, the mad
women went along, tracing the beams
and not thinking,
of leftist liberation, plutonium threats,
or pigeon-hole politics.
they speak in smoke.
dark doves fumbling through jasmine
fog, fumes to feel here, present, with
a body. a birdsong trenchant & splendoring.
the ceremonial magic of it.
red fingertips and magenta lips
illuminated mouths sing homeric hymns,
whorled discomforts, silent or loud,
a knock you never want to answer.
one drink and then you better know
what consent squandered—or was it
blown? magnetic, like time. soft matter
bit into, spat out.
be careful with him.
don’t go there.
with him
or with him
and with him
not with him.
a tooth \flesh \throat \weight.
hips. a debatable soaking wink.
don’t.
Andromeda’s chains leave invaluable archives,
back channel love, neon-lit, whisky sour.
through lacquered lips, a precise web.
heavy, steady, sparkling truths.
to make the heart a strange language.
and this warning—
this shining, warm thing,
is all we got.
Kate Siklosi lives, writes, and thinks in Toronto. She is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: po po poems (above/ground press, 2018), may day (no press, 2018), and coup (The Blasted Tree, 2018) and is the co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a feminist experimental poetry small press.