Poems

Medusa

icebox example of heart
claps sideways exhibiting
slender flutings of ice

in hospital gowns
their tiny feet scuttle
anonymous toes

a carpet tenderly stroked
an open-toed heel clamped
tenderly to bones

all rubber, seized up
the summer cathedrals
as sun flies drunk
through naked window
and settles on a space
in the corner

dust factory, flies
in bonnet

a ponderous tendril
slides out to noose
gentle mother
hushing like a wet nurse

do not look just yet

Woundful Electric

satyr of thistles & static
yarn the circuitry of
closer to the mouth
lightning vines

a familiar fleck
of flourescence
flares

little lithe loss
between
the fingers

I've kept you
from sparkling
good-byes

I've kept you
a slender stirring
about my neck

I've kept you
warmest
within taut skin

of my belly
your boldest
silhouettes
still thunder

Coma: Nine Dreams

1. sour fluid eats at breast (1) --acidic tannins

2. damoiselle--black & blue

3. where child now sun--a treacherous yellow--python-galled (2)

4. of sea-self mirrored in chrysalis

5. a boudoir (3) --garden of beds

6. one small nerve meter--ticking

7. books--hand-sewn--have narrowed this spine

8. fingertips--puzzles of skin--secrets inlaid

9. with something inexplicable (4) --spectre-eyed

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(1) crests of pink star fruit: sand dollar disks

(2) just the birds are silent with surprise--Blixa Bargeld on Total Eclipse of the Sun

(3) calmly laid--as in her ermine-trimmed coat and German croon

(4) briefly fills skin with the scent of freedom

Matina L. Stamatakis currently resides in upstate New York as a freelance photographer, writer, image manipulator, mother, and frontwoman of Viscera[e], an experiment in noise and auditory discombobulation. Some of her works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in La Petite Zine, Apocryphaltext, Moria, Intercapillary Space, etc.