isawhitney

[isawhitney]

My Sympathies Lie With Bosie

And his surfeit of love. To be fair

Is a monotony; the lover acts,

Straining, eye trained to the crowd.

He weeps damascened tears, and

His audience weeps alike: while

The fibreglass beloved waits

For the cue to a hand-raise, or

The grime of their sacrosanct

Smile. When the lover looks,

She summons Helen, Paris

Cressida in nylons and a tan; love

Smothers her darling in antiquity,

So that a man may be Achilles

And no longer any of himself but

A picture frame. Women have been

Swallowed whole by poems, sonneting

Their dead virtues as the love-

Predator grows sleek on feeling.

Bosie knew it. Knew it, and so spake: if he

Would go to Hell for me, why wait?

[isawhitney]

Well, what is it like?

I am reading a book. and the man who has written that book has raped me. or a girl like me and the pages are cream still, not red and sticky round the edges. just cream. they rustle cream round the edges when I turn them and laugh. at this joke he’s made on chapter twenty three. and while I laugh a girl is raped. or I am, laughing, raped. my throat is sore with it. and for all that the joke is a good one and I cannot help but laugh. with him? I am the girl, raped, laughing. I am the voyeur, stooping to catch her half-drunk cries and pickle them in laughter. laughing, I pin her down myself. as I pin pages, folding back these Rohypnoled pages, laughing all the while. I am reading with my teeth.

[isawhitney]

A Day Out At The British Museum

all we gather here, to honour

this gilt and marble idol at the antique altar

with its worn-down face.

with its dead blue eyes.

[isawhitney]

History

Has masticated me. Cobblestone teeth

Have ground me up. I am palatable,

My body crushed under the same sky

That savoured Roman ruins, reduced them

To rubble. Still hungry, this beast city

Seasons me with its overburdening time.

When it swallows, I am gone.

[isawhitney]

Spring coast, and the gulls

That follow instinct fly: wings

Beating like our hearts.

[isawhitney]

It is the devil!

And he mocks himself at us!

And he stretches out his feline neck

And his ermine bracelets

And his wolf throat

And he laughs at us!

And he grins like an ape

(And his teeth are yellow like an ape’s)

And we can feel his breath on us!

And he winks,

And he winks often, and lividly, and well,

And our proper sensibilities are maligned!

Whatever shall we do?

[isawhitney]

I hold my poem in my hands

And spit on it, and shine it well

So it can stand the world’s demands

And give ‘em hell.

[isawhitney]

Mandarin

I peel it back:

Paring skin, tearing chalky tendons,

Baring orange flesh under my cat o’nine tails.

All I seek is wisdom:

Some small insight into the seasons’ turn,

How rot can bloom at the core of an orange.

All I find is silence:

My ripened stoic keeps its secrets

And the bureaucracy of nature breathes out.

[isawhitney]

Freed from the burden of writing good poetry, I choose the superficial. I am writing poorly. I will use idioms if I care to, and similes like a bridge to my meaning. My words may not move your soul, but you will hear them and appreciate the logic in my saying so. “The woman,” you will think to yourself, “has sense. So few poets nowadays have sense.” Because I have stopped at mediocrity, perhaps we can talk to each other. Maybe we can even have an honest conversation. I, in my plain little way, will speak my nothings and you will reply with banality, and so we shall proceed: saying nothing, wording all.

[isawhitney]

I have a bee

caught in the fly screen

across my window

and it watches me,

dead,

while I undress

I have a moth,

dead,

on my carpet

that fell out of my lampshade

as i screwed the bulb in

I have a spider

and a fly

right in the corner of my life,

but while the fly,

dead,

observes everything

the spider lives on

and is unmoved by me

[isawhitney]

Along the Styx

Ely sian

El

y

sian

sian

y? Elys

i an

i an

an y,

Elys

El y an

si si si si si si

sian

si

y

i an

Elysian.

[isawhitney]

Flaw,

Pencil stroke? As it is,

My lapse again began

Again a poem

And words suffice

A candle breath of

Meaning.

[isawhitney]

Lifetimes

I am on the train (i spend

much of my life in trains)

and a girl (a little girl, more

properly i guess you could

consider her a toddler) with

a Frozen bouncy ball (anna

is on one side and elsa on

the other, so that i am mak-

ing eye contact with elsa

and remembering my old

copy of the snow queen)

throws a smile my way.

[isawhitney]

Genealogy of Thought

I am what I am because

You are what you are, and

You are what you are because

Your mother is what she is, and

Your mother is what she is because

Her mother was what she was, and

Her mother was what she was because

A seamstress in Antwerp caught the boat over to Maine, and

That, of course, is why

Your grandmother was what she was, and

Your mother is what she is, and

You are what you are, and

I am what I am

And here we all are,

Reading this poem together!

[isawhitney]

My Life As An Edgy Poet, Pushing Against The Barricades Of The Mainstream (And Yes, That Does Include My Overly Long Titles)

Today I think I’m gonna write about my tits

Or something else fucked up, or even about

My cunt and make Judith Butler cry. I mean, I

Could write about our climate crisis and how

Our planet’s gasping like a whore on her last

Legs, or one of those other hardcore things

I read about in magazines that people want

To write about. Like cancer. Fucking cancer,

Man. That’s one quick way to write a poem.

Just say cancer over and over. Or name them

All. Blood cancer. Brain. That one where those

Blokes’ balls fall off. Pretty soon, the whole

Damn poem becomes a statement about our

Health system and our kids, which is almost

Guaranteed to win some kind of thing. A schtick

Is what I need, as an edgy poet. Some trauma.

I guess I could cash into all my racial drama if I

Wanted, but Americans have that basically in

The bag and as it lies my skin isn’t dark enough

For anyone to empathise with me anyway.

Well, it’s good to try, but really I should stick to

Musing on my tits and making Judith Butler cry.

[isawhitney]

What the Hon. Jemima Braithwaite, Late of the Stage, Said

Tired?

But yes!

too tired to think of an oration or to tango. indeed,

I’m far

too tired to type or even to minaret

(if that’s the word I mean, that is, and not a type of barbecue)

no,

darling,

my star power’s been set with a

use-by date,

In fact,

all my good soliloquies got used up years ago

(despite my many, manifold attempts)

and

oh my dear!

I appreciate you

coming,

trying on the cloak

and smoking jacket

and dagger of the artist,

telling me that one more jaunt

round the proscenium couldn’t possibly

hurt

(and can’t you hear the applause?)

but the salt of the matter is

speaking plainly

that the stage isn’t what it was

all the flashy new directors!

and these actors!

my heavens,

the WoPA-taught little sods don’t know anything!

why, I expect

that the devils would,

without any prevarication,

simply out-and-out say

the name of the Scotch play!

which play? well, dear,

what else but

Macbeth!

oh

shit

[isawhitney]

Haiku

Daylight leaks. Through the

Bamboo slats on my window,

Rash sunbeams drip in.