Shopping Cart
    items

      October 28, 2019Craig van RooyenSiege Machinery

      Dusk slides beneath her dress,
      creeps across her thighs, slips
       
      over the rise of her belly.
      Night gathers in the hollow
       
      at the base of her throat.
      I know she hears knives sharpening
       
      when I unzip her,
      the dress down-fountaining
       
      over her bare feet. I can vanish
      into the dark small of her back,
       
      my bristled chin plowing
      down its single row.
       
      But there are places I dare not touch.
      The timpani behind a knee,
       
      the bowstring throat, a taut
      and fluted ankle:
       
      each an old crime scene
      still taped off.
       
      Yet, she has learned to open,
      guiding the hot blades
       
      of my hands into untouched places
      that burn with their own furnaces.
       
      I don’t pretend to be a healer,
      bring only my glinting hook of need
       
      to petal open her ribs, crack through
      the gristle of her assembled face.
       
      She is a horse, gravid
      with the bodies of old lovers.
       
      With them, I move inside her
      waiting to set the city on fire.

      from #64 - Summer 2019

      Craig van Rooyen

      “My teacher, Marvin Bell, once assured me that poetry can be absorbing for an entire lifetime. The longer I keep at it, the more I cherish the feeling of being absorbed — of being soaked up by the process of laying down words.”