matina stamatakis

Bagnio Girls

    We: silent and dead lily white, alphosis
        lips.

In the brothel
     they make babuinas of our fingers,
   tell us where to sit,
stand,
kneel
before rubied decanters

   —bruises deep, rouged hyson
         leaf marks, faint craquelure
     of vine-work—

lest Persephone do please [anything free, libertine,
raw venom unto itself]

       shall count with abacus
     days we hide in man's shadow.

What Words

  do these provocations dare
    to stretch out fetid syllables
   they call : beauty ?

A thing lay dull dead dogged doggering then grins watching
   muscat beaten to sludge down one cheek side—
     then they call it [beauty not]


     massacre


[and with its awakening
discover
life's abstract]

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