Madison Lazenby
Remember: No Hands Allowed
I’ve been peeling a pomegranate all day, imagining it
as my virginity, a baggie of seeds to keep
warm in my coat pocket
& eat later & find in my teeth
like my favorite wine so silted
with pieces of cork floating in the bottle
it looked yellow, one long
piece of puckered purple skin curling
in my hand, the inner flesh feathery & wet as a tampon string,
the little braided tail I grew up convinced
would one day fail me
& I was told by the older-
&-wiser girls at summer camp
that if such a thing were to happen,
I’d have to log into my God-given
harddrive to push out
the finger of cotton
it left behind,
bloody as a baby,
bloody as a lost tooth,
bloody as tomato soup
with hot sauce.
as the orgasm subsides, I say grace
— After “Praise Song” by Barbara Crooker
Bless what little time there is, what there ever
once was. Bless the closed door & the window shade
yawning open. Bless the wine we drank
last night & the funny pills we swallowed & all
the colors we smelled on our skin.
Bless your skin. Bless your hands
on my skin. Bless the elegies I wrote
to your broken glasses & the sonnets
I wrote to your teeth. Bless your teeth
& bless your nose while I’m at it.
Bless the rising sun that tells us,
motherly like a Mary or a Teresa, to go
the fuck to sleep. Bless the towns
we grew up in & all their rituals & bless
the gas you pumped into my car
to cross the stateline. Bless each & every one
of the cows we saw along the highway
& bless your hand pillowed on the back of my neck
while I drove us through the pouring rain.
Bless the meaningless darkness at 3 pm,
bless this old feeling winter,
& bless the pillow that collects my sweat.