5 by monica mcclure
SKUNK HOUR I am starting to have fun Some people are on their honeymoons because they have salaries paid vacations and sick days Some people are squeezing out the afterbirth in their hospital beds and feeling ok Another way of saying I don’t agree is saying I don’t believe in it My domestic partner is patting me on the back with strokes of conciliation His phone is always buzzing with sexless missives I don’t believe in intentions in this neoliberal context Pitted binaries of male universality stroked by Uma Thurman’s scream I don’t have an age, just suspension & Millay I would rather flirt with a hick than be a female lumpy space How many times have you seen the word noble in front of intentions That’s the problem with intentions: they are bourgeois, they are in English and will drive you to drink miles of millstones Perhaps I cry because I can’t believe how much there is that I don’t believe in Whatever I am, please look later WAR We can’t speak Spanish to our grandparents Corina gave her a name like Kimberly crossed with Timothy She threw a baggy of crack rocks down it sounded like dice Chinge le chinga le chinga le winge le a coto moroto moroto man This was in a mobile home at the entrance to a ranch road where Tom was killed ending the 17th century of my human life NAFTA is us oh hominy hominy hominy how many boys are in the backyard with guns OFF-DUTY MODEL It’s money time Bar Pitti is awash in late afternoon dank The sun is nuclear rubble on my wrist holding the menu askew Sometimes life is too self-loving In a big hat my brows are slugs I’m vexed by the cruelty of bees Hum with me oh ye dead ingenues gone to Kansas full of blame When I’m old I’ll be free When I’m horny I can’t have sex because I am ovulating When I’m on birth control I can’t have sex because I am not horny When I’m pregnant I can’t have sex because I’m blown out When I’m a mother I can’t bear to live When I can have sex anytime I want I am sex negative When I can’t have sex I am full of it The director sought his virgin idea in plain waters like a fop I will forgive anything of the man I love for I am arranged like a snail: front-loaded with antennae too supple for the big haul Goofy dangerous American complex I’m a big ole haul of a thing nevermind the stunned pupils A smart woman is a stylish stalking foil Cruel bees sucking all the life from the poor flowers Step lightly minx the camera can’t backpedal too fast MIMOSA TREE A voice is duplicitous Mine sounds like a child’s I love my family inappropriately We were all born together, mother father and six siblings from my womb, romantically every-one's voice eventually matured except for mine It’s my own fault Rescue me pink slipper tree I remember I like to sit around and make out which is unkempt And every year my apartment gets smaller and further away failure, impediment, split No one has asked me to sign a contract that is actually a drawing of a palm tree yet Sisters and brothers I’m sorry I guess everyone is going to fool me until I get a big girl voice until my thigh gets rubbed the right way fuzzy poms float down PRIVATE EYES Although I am adulterous it had never occurred to me to live a secret celibate life I’m going to All relationships are libidinal let’s be honest Even good men are assholes Mine is an asshole Do I care? I wonder. This poem is wasteful of the darkness allotted for it as long as I'm getting these sexts I’ve got only one hand Sometimes art has to be like that, too off-kilter but dipping deep from the public center |
MONICA McCLURE’s debut collection, Tender Data, will be published by Birds, LLC this year. She is the author of the chapbooks, Mood Swing, from Snacks Press and Mala, forthcoming from Poor Claudia. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Jubilat, Fence, The Los Angeles Review, The Lit Review, Lambda Literary Review’s Spotlight Series, The Awl, Spork and elsewhere. She curates Atlas, a collaboration series of visual artists and poets, and lives in New York City. |