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Poetry

Megan Burns

By September 26th, 2020No Comments

60 NEXT FETISH

always being first to text (giving), attention whore (everything to do with it), believing universe brought us together for special purpose (everything to do with it), confusing healthy, safe partners for boring (everything to do with it), consult Tarot cards for advice (everything to do with it), days of being ignored (receiving), dissecting text messages for subtext (giving), empty (everything to do with it), exchanging sexual pictures or videos w/ a stranger (everything to do with it), fantasize future w/ lover (giving), ignoring intuition about partner choice (giving),   imagining perfect sexual scenarios w/ strangers (giving), insert sexual language or flirt as a wall (everything to do with it), loving people who can’t love back (giving), mistaking anxiety for love (everything to do with it),  mistaking coldness, emotional unavailability or general disinterest for mysterious or deep unrequited need other can’t express (everything to do with it), playing role of perky, eccentric girl who has no deep intentions (giving), pretending not to care (giving), not caring (everything to do with it), rehash all details of minor interactions w/ friends for subliminal clues missed (everything to do with it), relishing in rejection (receiving), scared (everything to do with it), sex one time w/ a stranger (receiving), texts t/o day w/ strangers who want to meet for sex (giving), waiting for others to make contact (receiving), unable to quell compulsion to make contact to see how long until s/he responds (everything to do with it), unprotected sex (receiving), ways of a devil sleeping in a lion’s den (everything to do with it)

 

280 THEN FAIL ELSE LOAD BREAK

what happens over time

pure thought

we devote to our dead

poem an attention

to this object I chastely             handle far from hands

 

now I am a continuity of hours

to think that others exist

is that a facet of love

slip veil

crouch seaward a coasting lapped

like an embrace/ recall

touch a real hell not an imaginary

mouth to mouth carrion/ trouble circles

a spinning cracked/ useless as a basket

of inner sorrows brought to a wolf’s

battered door/ eat me your smile largely

disintegrating/ look at me/ who do you think

I am to beat sadness down to a reined beast/ smell

me/ curdling pain beneath my tongue/ spit for me/

a cancer fed with giving/ pure brightness/river stones

sewn rockwise to fill this void where once

a language of sweet sighs emitted/ spew now

baseless/ pleasure belongs to a dream once

I had those/ in another world/ in another song

not sounds of this siren

 

 

 

 

 

Megan-Burns-Dream-Pop-PressMegan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press (tremblingpillowpress.com). She also hosts the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans and is the co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com). She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Trickhouse, and the Big Bridge New Orleans Anthology. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has three books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013) and Commitment (2015) published by Lavender Ink. She has two recent chapbooks: Dollbaby (Horseless Press, 2013) and i always wanted to start over (Nous-Zot Press, 2014). Horse Less Press released her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me, in 2016. Her forthcoming fourth collection is titled BASIC PROGRAMMING.