Rochelle Owens: 'Hermaphropoetics' / 'Desire'
In this story
ripening on the vine so to speak
In this story a warhol-like
playfulness
a vinyl fruit of desire
teasing femme/homme
bringing millions to their knees
In a dream of a hermaphrodite
in silhouette
her/his body
elegant the fusion of human and bird
vertical horizontal
l’amour impossible l’amour possible
the physical poetic
iridescent her pelvis his/her body
spiritual/carnal
inside a dark purple fruit
the core divided
In a dream of a boy warrior
with bright red lips
her skin berries and apricots
diaphanous floating
languid the tendrils of pubic hair
a flush of wet hot air burning
her neck and face
Sorcery of his female brain
In this story a warhol-like
playfulness
teasing femme/homme
her teeth overlapping licking
a clot of blood
A hunter gatherer meat nuts fruit
his platinum blond curls
bringing millions to their knees
Love of the hermaphrodite
like a white swan
her hollow bones sculpted delicate
elegant the fusion
of human and bird
his hollow bones glowing under
a black light
magnetic her hollow bones
glowing in the dark
Meek sweetness the face the face
of the hermaphrodite teasing femme/homme
Out of the hole of Baudelaire
emerging from the mists of Cumae
A long curved fingernail
tracing a circle a cleft tracing
the pink mauve folds
tracing the flower vulva
the mother misery the father terror
a slit in the stalk blood seeping
carnal/spiritual
green and pale the scrotal lily
In this story a warhol-like
playfulness
a vinyl fruit of desire
teasing femme/homme
bringing millions to their knees
[NOTE. Rochelle Owens' latest book, Out of Ur: New & Selected Poems 1901-2012 is now awaiting publication by Shearsman Books. Of her poems here & elsewhere I wrote: “There is a voice in Owens’ work … like a fierce and unrelenting force of nature. Sharp and visual, she combines a landscape with a poetics, the domestic with the mythic, machines with the organic living world from which arises a construct and a fused vision: poetry and life.”(J.R.)]
Poems and poetics