I am 23 years old and just graduated from UIUC and Columbia College in Chicago with a B.A. in creative writing/English. Originally, I’m from Evanston, IL. I am currently trying to finish my second book of poetry-the first should be out by the first week of November and it’s called, “The Liquid In Love,” published by Aegina Press in West Virginia. My first book is full of a bunch of styles, probably because I’m still searching for my most natural voice. Everything I write is either free verse or prose, except I let one sestina escape into the book. The poems here are not from the book.
I’ve had an intense passion for writing since I was three when my mom found me trying to type a book on an old typewriter in the basement. Hopefully, if I get accepted somewhere, I’ll be in graduate school next fall studying more creative writing. For the future I hope to be a whacked out poetry professor, overdosing on coffee, staying up all night and initiating spontaneous road trips searching for new themes.
FABRIC OF A KISS
Young boy
tattooed himself
to my velvet temper,
My untamed parade.
Slapped him with melody
He choked and smiled
in my hedonistic web.
Coma in my lane,
He swam for my height,
Thinking it was all
that kept him from me.
On a day
Any heifer would do,
When an obscure
Light was leaking
-From his eyes,
Like some buttery monster,
I granted him a minute
on that vinyl couch.
His dizzy feet came at me
With a swollen breeze.
All I saw were
chaotic scraps of light
And stray, red knots.
My counterfeit kiss
peeled him to the skull.
Nine years of him
packed in a kiss.
He heard parachutes of violins,
Swan beaks insisting love.
I saw a drowsy sow.
Still, my lips tugged him to oblivion.
TROJAN MAN
Last night I was touched
by an aged, black-eyed
Trojan from the back woods.
He made me fall like a bold faced
Ballet dancer with unclear eyes.
We lit through a sensuous, agonizing fever-
With the optimal balance
of the Big Dipper.
He broke the nauseating script,
Waking my neglected comedy
with October secrets.
Combing through the morning
bonfire with tribal concord.
Wind-chill bit at his semen.
Through the breathy encore
I accepted his release
Knowing the cold injection
would rapture me
Swelling my prolific doubt.
VENUS
Hours of leaky meteors
Hound the oceanic part of my mind
that sinks for snowy, white soldiers
Back from horrendous scandals-
nights with sharp-toothed jaguars
in their pillows.
The nearest saxophone miles away.
you live there like a
Black dollar rogue
Lurking in
that part of me that is Venus
Rocking metro phases
through the thoughts
I never figured were pliable.
BLEMISHED
The octave of us is an avenue
of blackbirds with marbleized wings
As the blacksnake licks the bobcat
in a herculean daze.
Your impotent homeland spread
the last deep’sea of freckles
on your icy, olive face.
Your blemished hands belong on you like
Auburn liqueur on pale blue tablecloths.
I swim in the black of your eye until it
liquefies like blues in autumn.
We talk like friends of jewel and berry bandits
Erasing halls of bored handwriting.
MINERALS
Rays from his barren eyes
Collect the cranberry air,
Rain’fall carries the temper
of comets to the crib.
Consoled by the concord of thymes,
minerals and misty plums,
His blood is baptized
with the cocoa and
toffee climate.
Prancing through the
crooked underground
His roots condemn
the pressure.
Thoughts of solemn drifts
Time in laps
of waves and sun-down.
His dramatic, purple soul
lives in the sands
of wooden music and butterfly leaves.
Taken back
Not there but all of this here
Balances itself like landing tornadoes.
By Allison Eir Jenks