Let us record how they seduced us
one by one
how they whispered only you
in our ears
they were like fractured ships
all arms and hairline cracks
scudding along shoals
of impunity longing for anchor they confessed
and fingered our
locks.
Let us affirm how lush
their enjoyment
of our fleet wonder
cheaply won
it rankled us yet somehow when slavishly
they contort
become whippoorwill
or woodsman
or carnivorous again stroking
one finger
twisting their beards
we all sway in favor
though reckon we’ll refuse them
ever hereafter we will
refuse should they become a hungry
snowstorm
our prints sinking into loomed carpets
bluegold their canine delight
is alchemic you are so
young they rasp
tongues
over teeth
inscribing spells
on the roofs of our mouths
pads of our toes dear as gold
they pour us
out streaming wet
as polish on semi-precious agate or snowflake
obsidian but we hate them I
hate him
for how my belly pulses
static or window glass
how my locks cut themselves
and curl in his hands how
Beloved he pulses and I
let him.
Elizabeth O’Brien is the recipient of a Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant through the Loft Literary Center, and the James Wright Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in many magazines, including New England Review, The Rumpus, and Ploughshares. She currently lives and writes in Minnesota, and her first chapbook, A Secret History of World Wide Outage, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2018.
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