Poetry Groupie
for
K.P.
If I could be your groupie,
I’d bathe in Barthes, think
of clever things to say
about the state of arts, value
of vowels, why the word
blithe has become passé.
I’d join every region
of the MLA, wear leather
to your lectures,
meditate on the phallic
significance of a pen.
If I could be your groupie,
I’d make you want to swear
off women, suck
a lemon, lick my tit
and call it a day.
I’d let you play
blackjack across my
back, feed weed
to your lovers when
they scraped my nape
and asked for a “hit.”
If I could be your groupie,
I’d tell you who was full
of shit, ask you whose
ass to kiss. We could
conspire, your fuel,
my fire, feed each
other lines like
a rush of sun caramelized
the sky. I’d never try
to rhyme again. I’d learn
enough of enjambment
to encode my lines,
subliminal seduction
aimed at you, and wryly.
Split
This is how
your
hair smells: incendiary.
It remembers
more
of night than your body
even. It is
a
study in ash and ember,
gradation
from
dark to light finer than
any grind
of
talc. It may never come clean.
When your bones
are
bare, it will be a nest fit for birds,
an aerie, your skull
the
only egg.
Kristi Wilson is a slave to the system at the University of
Texas at
Arlington. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming
in Borderlands:
Texas Poetry Review, Illya's Honey, Sulphur River Literary
Review, and
others. She has embraced being 30, and lives in harmony with
an orange
tabby and a Doberman.
