local_library Swithering

by Allison Jenks

Published in Issue No. 4 ~ July, 1996

Not even the Judo-thrill of your penis
Dissolves this sexual amnesia
Untied and tense in a scarf of dread,
Cruel-headed.

Killed by the craving faces of women
As you exploited and
Roared on them.

How much more do you grant me?
Which of your serpents did I get
Or did I make them myself?

I want to assault them,
learn them-
Train them,
Just to predict a rage.

I won’t let you scream me.
Raw dirt Erodes on me
Unsaturated, like Garden worm skin
Isolated under Mangrove trees.

Sucking your violent sensations
Into my limp stomach,
Inhabiting masculinity,
Cranking the hoodlum into my emptiness.

What ferocity outweighs my Chimera mechanisms?
Is it that scream inside me
Ravished by cowardliness,
Like the print of Dead Sea Scrolls?

Is that scream a soul-span of chills
That paints Paris greens in Vienna?
The Soy of China’s lakes,
The Soy of it all-
Danish pastries, Russian dressing,
Arctic Autums sliding
Breast-down frozen slopes of lake?

Orgasmically circular-
A Milano carousel
Circulating catalystic blood for
A mangled world of lies.

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Allison Jenks' poems have appeared in : New Orleans Review, Art Times, Wisconsin Review, American Literary Review, and Midwest Poetry Review. She was a James A. Michener fellow, awarded by John Balaban, at the University of Miami's M.F.A. program, where she was Editor In Chief of Mangrove.