Lisa
Marie Basile is a metropolitan New York City girl. She is expecting to
graduate from Pace University in December 2009 with a degree in English
language and literature. While at Pace she won six writing awards in
the university’s Annual Writing Contest (first place in poetry and
fiction! Yay!). Her work has been published in several magazines
including Billboard, CosmoGirl!, Knocks From the Underground, and Maxim. Her newest venture is serving as editor-in-chief of Caper Journal (do check this out as it insists on being experienced not described). She maintains a collection of her work at her blog. This unsettling poem is part of an award-winning series of poems and fictional pieces. An excerpt can be seen at Caper Journal.
On its own, this poem crawls inside the reader’s mind and sticks there,
the images of clean laundry and dirty bodies stark and unrelenting.
Gael’s Mother III
By Lisa Marie Basile
Your mother is hanging white sheets
on a line on the lawn,
and her body is big and wide and open.
The shape of Summer.
She had you, the beautiful dirty thing
she named Gael.
And when you have me, I am
small and barren, winter.
But you melt your mouth on
my collarbones and the base of my spine,
and I am suddenly a tomb,
a pyramid, a farruca,
piercing the sky, your sweat
is my bandage
unraveling into a sharp,
red, evil dance.
She hangs the laundry,
smells of dirty sweaty body,
her hair in a braid and a hairnet,
and I imagine her jealousy as you
make a phantom of me against the
window,
shrieking into the desert.
I had a visceral response to the poignancy here, my heart lifted and fell. Thanks for the experience.