2 June 2002 | Vol. 2, No. 2
Gravity
Mitzi's eyes were large as nipples
in an ice storm, her lips quivery and thin
after the Russian steppe peasant fashion.
She wanted to die, as many of us do,
in her sleep, lights off, her last memory
some love-flooded event from childhood:
a cemetery smooch, or pork roll picnic
under the elm with her best friend, Phil.
"But I want it to be fun too," she said,
nibbling her nails, giggling.
"I want Daddykins to make that monster face
like he's gonna eat me!"
Mitzi loved laughing as much as she loved dying,
praised the wince and smile alike.
She spent her days stitching REM sleep
into treatises on the absence of ithyphallic
imagery in the work of minor Samoan haikuists,
convinced the line between one thing
and another was thinner than a carpenter
ant's anus. And she spent her nights
poking holes in the moon, so tired was she
of the lunar pull. When she left, she left
her party-colored hair shirts and lipsticks
on the prayer mat, a rebuke to the body
she longed to live without, a contract
with the one she could not.
About the author:
Chris Semansky's poems, essays, stories, and reviews appear in various literary magazines, journals and newspapers, including theMississippi Review, College English, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry New York, the Oregonian, Postmodern Culture, New Orleans Review, and American Letters & Commentary. His first collection of poetry, Death, But at a Good Price, received the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and was published by Story Line Press. His second collection, Blindsided, was published by 26 Books. His chapbook, André Breton Works the Crisis Prevention Hotline, appears online in Mudlark. He can be reached by email at cks18@attbi.com.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Chris Semansky at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 2, No. 2, where "Gravity" ran on June 2, 2002. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
