What I’m Reading-July 24

I just finished reading Jill Alexander Essbaum’s book of poetry, ‘Harlot‘. It is full of delicious wicked poems, and If you’ve ever read her poetry, you know just what I mean…this is definitely a book to be savored. She has a way with words–with language that is beautiful, surprising, profane and profound all at the same time.

Here is her poem Whoreheart, reprinted with her kind permission:

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I am the bridge you dare not cross.
An ice-floe that won’t be defrosted.
A signpost in your dense, damp woods.
The serrated flower of the snakeroot.
A doe amid the beeweed.
And the rocks in the field hurt my feelings.

And I’m the spendthrift wench in debtor’s jail.
The wound that won’t quite heal.
That little Judas sitting on your shoulder.
The irregular bread of a mendicant’s supper.
A disastrous truth told in candor.
I’m the milksap of the oleander.
And mine are the cyanide sockets of almonds.

I’m the kink in the appleworm, the dolmen 
that entombs you. I am not safe nor sorry. 
Swollen Moses, am I your darling? I shall part 
like a red and willing sea. And do I simile? 
Take of your metaphor and face me.

And I am the ocean in which you’ll drown.
 Abundantly black, I yawn and I drawl.
 I’m calm but for aggregate, gathering storms.
 And I swarm your bed like a charm 
of fiend finches. And last night I rained inches,
and hours. And I am the pitcher

plant’s practical talent. The flytrap, the pie plate,
the oblate, the shrew. The mistake you made
too late to undo. The jackscrew to your threaded rod.
A fraud. I’m the pussycat of need. Your defeat. Your pall.
And I loom for you like a terrible end.
And I am not your friend.