Yours - Dadon Rowell
I am your china doll.
Chip me while you play.
Snap my index fingers
So they can’t point at you.
I am your blood bag, your donor.
There are red pictures each morning
On the bathroom mirror.
Paint it on your face
Lick your fingers.
I am your ashtray.
Force smoke into my lungs
Thirty compressions
Two breaths
Until my tear ducts
cough ash.
I am your rib.
Embedded in you
Red and blue ropes
Mummify my body
And compress my lips.
But I was made
To be your canvas,
Your grotesque
To nod my head like a child’s toy
And taste the metal
Of another woman’s perfume.
Touch Me - Dadon Rowell
It’s been a while
I say
as your fingers
slide up my spine
my skin giggles
under your hands
You scrape your teeth
along my neck
I hum and twist
tilt back
back
back
Your mouth
is wet honeysuckle
your skin sighs
against mine
as you move lower
You stamp fingerprints
into my hips
graze kisses
down my thighs
thumb the backs
of my knees
You twist your fingers
in damp lace
and tug
Contributor's Note
Dadon Rowell is a poet and English master's student at the University of Waikato. She is also a part-time librarian, and has learnt that saying her thesis topic and job title make her dynamite at parties. Her work appears in previous issues of Mayhem and in the upcoming Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.