Lisa Marie Basile
What We Talk About When We Talk About Satan
Our cuticles are bleeding by noon, a whole mattress covered in fluid pinstripes.
It is easy to love when you have a wide sky and a table set with yellow china.
For years I would only suck dick wearing a plague mask
and then I became a woman.
Of age, don’t love a man whose eyes work well, or at all
& raise a lynx in the backyard
trained to kill quickly
when the heart gets too big to continue
and the body is loosened to ribbons.
The irony of promise
is that it wears at its subjects,
remorseless, with teeth.
War/lock III
forthcoming in war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press)
how you unloved me so—
you slow motioned
me
the brick house
[my mouth]
atom-bombed
into blasted brown cloud
tea
cups
[shattered]
a white drape
[unfurling]
three white pears
lustrous & thrown
stockings hung to dry
[o, your hips, you say]
slowly, slow, an offing calls
[vows]
always love hard through sickness
[‘when you woke smelled of sick’}
harp
[plucked hesitance]
for the garden wedding
amor, amor
one pearl loose to the floor
another man, he who
climbed inside me,
climbed inside
you
to set me
free
like tableware
[or cutlery]
for a br& new
morning
the pyrrhic whiteness of
morning motion
the return from the tomb
as hopeful
as blood
there is nothing
left here to love
grey ash in droves
when the black cloud
sidles away from
that which is
my glory
Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School and is the author of Triste, from Dancing Girl Press. The Poetry Society of New York released her chapbook, Andalucia (Brothel Books, 2011). war/lock, a chapbook, will be released by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. She is the founding editor and publisher of Patasola Press, and is an assistant editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal. She is part of the #bookdress party at footknots.com.
