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.)]