MP’s featured poet for July is Nadia Scrieva. Nadia’s poetry sings with her young and vibrant voice–a voice full of emotion and experience that speaks to the feminine in all of us.
The Necklace
I have retired your necklace
from where it hung
doggedly; yes that dog-tag
dangling between my breasts
bearing in its weave
your name, your address
directions to he
who plunged his flag
in this chest
and like every conceited
conqueror cast
a once happily-untamed
wilderness
into terrified
trembling unrest
with the violation
the sinfulness
of your quest
to possess me.
For all to see
to impress all
you left
a brutal branding;
my neckline’s
permanent guest.
Seared into collarbones
were the letters
evidence of your lack
of thoughtfulness
in your passionate
scurry to mark me
your haste and eagerness
to leave tattoos
of your touch
in the memory
of my skin
like rabid gnawing pests
and an infected piercing
in my soul’s growing recess.
Yet who would have thought
such influence
would erode
in the washings
of time’s caress
and imagined the welts
of such incidence
would wane and fade
under even worse duress?
I mean it this time
if ever before I tried–
by removing your necklace
with a dramatic flourish
to bid good-bye
to all insignia of you inside:
I really do mean it this time.
~~~~~
Aristomache
O love
How fortunate we are
To have met in this
Century—
I am she
Whom you have been seeking
Through countless incarnations and
Galaxies.
It is true
Now more than ever
The streets are teeming with
Possibility—
But don’t you dare
Just pass me over as just
Another fish in the
Urban sea.
She may have
Lily-white, lilac-scented
Hands of gold-dusted
Ivory—
But I have
The hands with which a thousand sacred
Kingdoms have been defended or
Brought to kneel.
~~~~~
Ascension
Dear alloy of the mined lands,
I know your secret;
I know you extend deeper than the floor.
A
Sweet ally clutched in my hands,
Through you I feel it;
You pierce the earth at its pulsating core.
A
Trusted appendage de terre
My pillar strong,
I’m positive, I’m negative,
But you are the grounding prong.
A
You’re the well-held hilt
My defence, my offence,
My reassurance.
A
Like your kin on the subway,
You realign me
with my own centre of gravity,
You reconnect me
with the source of all nativity.
A
I know you burn in the bowels of hell,
This is easy to comprehend
But I know also your darker secret;
That you stretch up forever into the heavens.
I do not know how this can be
It’s almost betraying that you could be so holy.
A
But I’ve felt the freedom of the winds
When I threw my arms around you
And clung
And clung, and windborne discovered
Fleeting truth
And soaring smoothly channelled goddesses
And overwhelmed
By your gift of a nanosecond’s nirvana
I descended–
And thus my worship ended.
A
You are the bangles of Indira
You are the earrings of Salome
You are the teapot of the Geisha
You are the swing in the Moulin Rouge
You are our inherited tool
Infusing the next with collected ancient wisdoms
The recyclation of something we didn’t understand
But you taught us to exploit.
A
To touch you is to be filled with Draco’s fire,
Like him, to round Polaris nightly
Caught in the global gyre,
Spinning with celestial bliss.
A
Anyway; you’re the only thing I trust in this place–
You, the altar I circle,
Who inconspicuously impales
both the heavens and the earth
in order solely to serve me
as the axis
of my dance.
