H.D. Imagiste watches the birth of the new woman on tv
venus’s seashell
i.
This is my ambered sarcasm.
This is my garden’s rough
This is my ambered sarcasm.
This is my garden’s rough
cut blossom my
bitter jewel with veins of pearl
and the hard-edge glow of the
indigestible. Watch how I cut
ironies out of distance and
intimacy just by looking
out obliquely or reciting these
perplexing endearments from
and the hard-edge glow of the
indigestible. Watch how I cut
ironies out of distance and
intimacy just by looking
out obliquely or reciting these
perplexing endearments from
just out of reach.
This is my wayward angularity:
ii.
Follow the line of questioning
like lines of thigh and wrist on
other painted bodies: soft
curving into this
tranquil smile, unlike any other offering.
A calm wind blowing.
The accidental nature of my transgression
means
the seashell produced a swallow-able
pearl.
Follow the line of questioning
like lines of thigh and wrist on
other painted bodies: soft
curving into this
tranquil smile, unlike any other offering.
A calm wind blowing.
The accidental nature of my transgression
means
the seashell produced a swallow-able
pearl.
house of venus
i.
Lean against me, smooth as oil
hard uncertain skin of the
hyperreal conjuring
mimicries and even subtler
mysteries:
the comic and the tragic
like sympathetic magic.
Like longing
for this plastic touch. Listen: I am
the pearly link between what’s in
and out of reach.
Lean against me, smooth as oil
hard uncertain skin of the
hyperreal conjuring
mimicries and even subtler
mysteries:
the comic and the tragic
like sympathetic magic.
Like longing
for this plastic touch. Listen: I am
the pearly link between what’s in
and out of reach.
ii.
Hard shell
vain of vein
Can my careful tragic face unravel
everything?
try so
hard to catch my
painted gaze
diffuse on all these
humid sighs
again.
Hard shell
vain of vein
Can my careful tragic face unravel
everything?
try so
hard to catch my
painted gaze
diffuse on all these
humid sighs
again.
stella maris
Again. It’s time to look up.
Look up: I am the beautiful
stranger who kissed you.
You are the one who lay
on the bank making
clouds into shapes. You said,
Perhaps we too will saturate til
we’re whole again.
I said swim.
ANNEXE
March 11, 2020
Ellen Morgan Butler is originally from Nashville, Tennessee, and has been living and writing in Wellington since 2017. You can read more of her poetry and short fiction in Takahē, Mayhem, Turbine│Kapohau, and elsewhere.
