Category: Inspiration from others

Día de Muertos

painting & photo by Elizabeth

THE CHOIR

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.
Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds, 
the garbage truck suspended in shy light, 
the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway, 
the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm.
Holy the handmade and created side by side, 
the sapphire of their marriage, 
green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell
rinsed by the buzzing tide.
Holy the light--
the poison ivy livid in its glare, 
the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens, 
the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques.
The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we, 
cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale, 
inscrutable until divulged by god
and sex into its gender, every touch
a secret intercourse with angels as we walk
proffered and taken. Their great wings
batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons.
Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs
the shock of the divine crash-landing.
I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail, 
the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight
themes of the carbon sea where we are joined: 
zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths
crowning the compost heap.

 Olga Broumas

Día de Muertos

Inception

poem & photo by Elizabeth

INCEPTION


She asks,
wants him 
to be the first. 
As if the other 
were a ripened peach,
easily bruised,
they time their movements
to the ancient 
pulse of 
hearts 
then
seas.

Sharp tears through
hidden flesh
steal her breath.
They stop,
begin again,
relentless clock counts towards curfew.

Soothed by his hot sweet breath,
she rests in his embrace—
linear time shifts to the relative distance
between innocence and experience—

she arches,
accepts whispers
fingers
lips
as he eases her through
surmountable pain.

Her chrysalis rips,
new life emerges:
    	the harsh sun
    	scent of clary sage
    	wings drying in a warm breeze.

Thank you to the editors of Hot Flashes: sexy little stories and poems for first publishing this poem.