4 Tributes to Sappho - Vicky Curtin
No Man
I might have felt
you were the gentle gender
had I voiced your name, a soft
Sappho; no,
a man is reflex
alone, in my vein.
I have done the womb an injury.
lost
The first embrace
saddled me;
saw me home
in old stars
sea
It comes in;
the placid back
endears the moon
the model eye
can lift a dress
Music
It was all her,
that chronic tune;
I never heard you
singing then
in the steel tom
and sigh of the moon
I played with Kylie - Vicky Curtin
Violent pierce;
a tender blood,
diabetic thumb straight
hitching for
the memory, long
of young hair
the brown tails
Arabian Nights
plaited through
the witch-smoke
skipping rope
Betty Boop
and iron swing
that nearly took my eye.
3 Garden Songs - Vicky Curtin
Scented
He said,
‘I will visit the garden
after the rain’.
Dulcet,
I thought,
is earth depressed;
ripe as rot,
the crape of fruit
failed on the vine,
and the spoor of the hunted.
Stunt
Words, now, I have pared to the seed
exposed eye - the poorly sewn;
when the cat arched its back
it said so much
and I wrote stretch; for that’s
what it did.
Closer
I want to touch
the uncomfortable dew;
see the swivers
untamed inside;
I want to taste
the callow blade,
and stalk the earth
at the kitten’s eye.
Contributor's Note
I am a mother four, in my third year of a BA - English major. I want to master the art of prose; but you will see none of that here! Poetry is my pussy cat; a little bit mad, and always on my lap.