Karyna McGlynn

To be curled in that snail light of your heathen

 

 

friend's panties       the glow worm              man stuck

              ‘gainst your ribs       & tumbling in          ectoplastic

joy the risk of         sleeping under               her canopy's

               sticker galaxy          phosphorescing        or marigold

butter blooms        which just exist              on packaged

               panty sets &            if there's no fan        & if she pees

in a glass &             says chamomile              tea do you sip

               if she covers            your mouth with      her crotch

do you dare            to inhale what                she keeps in her

               ballet tote               ‘sides 2 shoes            rights a wrong

smelling of             cider & unwashed           birds her face

               a collapsed              pear as some half       sister brushes

her hair &               she curdles it's time       you go home           

 

 

 

 

Oh, you really don't want to go into the library

 

 

you have no future there

                                                        this violet in pieces in John Maynard Keynes

                                                        this pressed columbine in Joseph Conrad

                                                        you practice on your own hand

           

                                                        (a joystick & a bag of fertilizer)

what is this: some joke?

                                                        the bull's testicles draped inside the book

                                                        two grenades

                                                        the tribal woman's breasts hung on the page

                                                        brown eggs in a mesh bag

 

                                                        (death & sex tickle the same damn spot)

get out get out get out

                                                        you push this trolley toward the far end

                                                        it is walleyed, wheel askew

                                                        it keeps asking for the exit

           

                                                        if you ask dewey to wrap you in his black coat

                                                        he will

 

                                                        (he'll lay you low & cover you completely)

 

 

 

 

I want to tell her I won't need calculus, I want to warn her

 

 

but she is in the citrine light of her Rosemunde Pilcher

 

                                                  why when her hair is just washed

                                                        & nothing really bad is going to happen?

 

like I wear a ragged cut-out of my yearbook picture

 

                                      she doesn't question my fear or ardency

                                                       but blames it on the drill team

 

a part of me knocks on the pane, but that's way back

 

                                           under the black ice of a Kate Bush lyric

                                     I'm so co-o-o-old! Let me in-a-your window

 

& besides she just fingers the hem of my hiked sundress

 

                                                when she doesn't know how I'll wear it

                                          alone to the mall with a wall of pink bangs

 

her body wilts in the gas kiss of her huge humidifier

 

                                   I really don't mean to scare her but have to

       crawdad back & forth on the question

 

of how much she needs to know to finish her math

 

 

 

 

Square in the gut of lovemaking lessons

 

 

                                                                            old elemental roses

                                                                            fell from the yellow

 

                                                                            cracks in the ceiling

 

A cubic inch of Texas tumbled to the bed

 

My eyes were still swollen from dusting

 

                       

                                         Just then, I pinched the blue

 

bonnet cat-claw of what could be my future, entire

 

 

 

My bed sham shook in its lavender liquidity   

 

My Rangerette boot wanted whitener or death

 

                                                                            The AC slowly began

                                                                             to play Suck & Blow

 

with the pages of my open book

 

Briefly, the rhinestone tiara retracted its claws

 

 

    said, “Fuck me. Go.”

 

 

 

 

Karyna McGlynn earned her MFA from University of Michigan, where she received the Zell Fellowship in Poetry and a Hopwood Award. Her first book, I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, received the 2008 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. She's published several chapbooks including Scorpionica (New Michigan Press, 2007) and Alabama Steve (Destructible Heart Press, 2008). Her poems appear in Fence, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, Octopus, LIT and Ninth Letter. Karyna is currently the Claridge Writer-in-Residence at Illinois College. She edits linelinelineline with Adam Theriault. Her website is karynamcglynn.com.