An Atlantic Away
It’s nights like this where rain permeates flesh
bone, the dark oblivion opens above. I wish you
would envelope me, consume me in midnight
waves. You are 4,375 miles across me, body
made of salt, coral colored on the surface, sunlit
deceit. I wade for your warmth. But you’re so
layered, cool parts no one has ever seen. I’ve
tasted your trenches filled with luminescent
monsters. I’ve heard the barometric pressure
that pumps your blood, rumored to be unmoved
by my moon. But I am the boat. You, sailor, I
carried over decades of oceanic residue. Then
you moored me. After our furious white peaks kissed
uncharted territories. How I crave that slippery wet
of vulnerability wrapped around my ankles, seaweed
sick debris from underneath. I now know you are lost
to the locker. I must remember these are only shanties,
siren tears dripping down on me, singing how we are
better
apart.
Ode to Mountains and Sea
Inspired by Helen Frankenthaler’s painting of the same name
unprimed canvas
my body cream doused in kerosene
see the cerulean
see her
see me
yes, there turpentine transparency
one and two make me in the corner she’s over there
O how tan
just peachy keen
salmon center I’m bleeding
golden cup my breast empty
soak-stain skin
Pour sky
Pour perpetual
Pour me
the jagged pieces creatures live beneath
Count my arms she’s starfish beating breathing
Seafoam teeth I’m so hungry
so shell my neck periwinkle petite
Feather gray I’m gleaming
sea salt impasto
rock ash aura
she is my I am her gift
Helen pock horse and war
think of
flesh
fish
fowl
foul
I’m full how could she
ever be
more
Pipa Pipa
His hyoid bone snaps
rippling muddy waters.
In anticipation, her river
body quivers. His star-fingers
grip her horny waist in a dance.
Body leaf-thin she pirouettes
as he pushes a hundred eggs into
her bare back:
primal pas de duex.
Months of gyre gestation,
bubble-like pockets pop open.
Little monsters gnash tooth-less,
tongue-less mouths - hungry
for release. Her doubts rip
from dorsum as demon dears
swim away. Leaving clusters
of caves, impressionable abandon.
Surinam begins to shed,
she sees
her honeycomb skin
scarred and ringed
like a pointillism
painting.
Seurat brushed
every edge of her
pock-marked past, like the one on the left
in Les Poseuses.
Postpartum holding
more than Atlas
could ever carry,
the bottomless sea.
Larissa Larson is a graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing program at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She serves on the editorial board of Water~Stone Review and Runestone Literary Journal. Her poems have appeared in The Briar Cliff Review, Gyroscope Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and Welter Online.
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