Sticky Night

Pale moth suspended in lucidity
The whole night exhales at me and I suck
At the part-dream, the part-cellular trace
The night flowers are murmuring, deep-voiced
A bulging throat in every stamen
The night flowers have a feminine name
But they are not feminine to me, not
To my body response, the branching blue
Veined driving vine, hung with sparkling glands
The sugar heads, yes, the night-scented drops
Balls, bursting balls, hot sweaty bursting balls
White night cocks, a million hard of them
Unbutton, strong and sticky, bursting yes
Out of your jeans, a million of you

Night-long, parted mouths saintly and aloft
Breathing cocks circulating secreta
Surrounded by sensitivity—this
This—I never asked you for commitment
Just the act, the running vines round my limbs
And my waist in twine, I am a flower
Now too, suspended in subconscious acts
This is the lightest tie of the body
Replaces the malignant binds of years
Nothing exists beyond suspension—this
A million cocks tenderly shooting
Arrows of chemicals, my airways full
Tonguing your name, so sticky in my mouth
Now numberless, clear and eucharistic


​
​*

​
The Ecstasies of a Flower

I stand in the bowels of the woodland
My hysterical roots fill my body
Females pining for the deep of a male
The mysteries locked in the opposite
Changing voice to his, wetting my insides
Crying nipples, jewel orbs continuous
My vibrations float on air with the pine
Faint and infected with sores of desire
And there are no walls, there is no city
We could be many-petalled birds—ascend
Come with your stamen, come here and unfold
The mathematical euphoria
The splitting golden climax frequencies
The wordless replications of summer

*

The Kiss

I sucked the first tease
Off your tongue
The oyster
It descended into my heat
Glowed back upwards
And my brain escaped

All muscle
Blood pearls surfaced
Engorged taunts
And mutual smiles
At threats of retreat
And lightness
Of ease

Wife, ex
Cold mouth sweats
And pissy overflow
Cold neck
Couldn’t let go

The denials cleaved
Harder
Than the truth
Inexplicit whatever
And our gritted teeth
Locked horns

We used all our come
In that one kiss
And I still taste your voice
In my head

*

SUB

Servant
Sad slave
Too sub to try
You feed the bomb
Like a middle child
A mass of secondary genes
Observing behind the perspex
In comfort
Planted
Fuckless

In comfort
Planted
Fuckless

*



The Penalty for Guilt

The shipwreck has come to me for comfort
He drinks my spit and he is defenceless
I bathe him like a baby while he cries
Compensating for his missing power
I bathe his arrow gently, the blue-veined
Aching driving vine, growing tall, taller
To reach the Sun, life’s aim, and it is time
To give him the moment of his relief
I take it in my mouth, I feel his pulse
On the roof of my mouth and on my tongue
Our nerve endings are all in erection
And it is time and I bite off his guilt
Set it on the grass amidst the daisies
In State—the flowers represent my love

His cries change—baby, sad pissy baby
I fondle his wound tender like Mother
I have no guilt—the Sun has no guilt when
She explodes and she blinds her worshippers
The two ends of the wound seep blood and milk
And guilt, the pollutant, and the ants crawl
Over to his guilt, carry some away
With perfectly-formed backs, obedience
I had wanted to watch him carry things
Back and forth, back and forth, but not baggage
His groan, core-born, recognition of fault
And how he ruined our love and reward
Quiet!—I put it in my living grave
Wrap it in my pink satin and fuchsia

*

Our Reflection in the Pool

The Sun is high, hot and pornographic
Our bodies reflect, slim and eternal
A breeze hits the pool and the light dances
And we foam like sweating horses at play
The Sun disappears behind a cloud’s veil
And we disappear like we were nothing
Two dead flies float by in the grey, followed
By a petal, a procession, a cry
And the Sun emerges and the birds call
We are back again, statuesque lovers
Switch of breeze makes babes of vegetation
Reaching and drooping, as flowers and weeds
And the Sun falls and our shadows open
Impotent hunchback and necrotic hag

*

There is no word

In English
For the body scream
The howling bitch
Of private love pain
The subterranean
Primeval non-sound
The wretched litanies
Of existence

══════════════════
Karina Bush is an Irish writer, born in Belfast and now living in Rome. She is the author of three books, ‘Brain Lace’ (BareBackPress, 2018), ’50 EURO’ (BareBackPress, 2017), and ‘Maiden’ (48th Street Press, 2016). Karina’s work has also been published by Tangerine Press, Akashic Books, Expat Press, Morbid Books, Ragged Lion Press, the International Poetry Studies Institute, The Nervous Breakdown, Entropy Magazine, and more.

*Image credit: Still from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film ‘La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc’