new from above/ground press: sex in sevens, by Pearl Pirie

sex in sevens
Pearl Pirie
$5

sex at 31.2: thigh pillars as profundo as Song of Solomon’s songs

no church has eclipsed my shadow in a decade,
but religious allegory splits each nail bud.
God says what you love, He will be jealous of
and will take, to test. (a messed up sense of love.)

lack of *ahem* data points. intervals sharp to graph. (& I do graph.
& belay gratification with gaffes.) like uuuh after figure skating show
in bed — I pulled a score card of 6. guess who laughed. no, really, guess.
   
*

I garden as he leaves, receive a wave. (zoom in on my face)
Love thy neighbour God says & I do.         Jim said once
your most sensual poems are of forests — write me about trees.
tell me about your fern groves. (meaning can be mean.)

look into my pupils; that’s me in there — teeth clipping
the roses as a tango tangle, minding my hedge, mind’s eye
behind a patch, arms make an espalier of all that I won’t say.

*

he passes, climbs into his Dodge Ram Tough, 4WD
he prides for going wherever he likes. mud-spattered.
I tuck into bucket seats of my eyelids, shake knuckles loose
from being his seatbelt buckles. really, body, really?

neighbour is more misshapen, rougher than a chopping block.
he can’t smell that good. whoops. we know this: to dismiss
as less, next encounter will cone-deafen that lie. what is, is.

*

dry throat swallows visions of rosebud lips of our
grandchildren, goats, kittens. dozens of kittens.
to chisel him to size, I’m left with a Greek youth torso
much like what I have back inside.

if you spent as much time romancing me, we’d
be in a better place. blue moon body forgets
the forest musk of your trunk, thrift of its curves.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2016
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Pearl Pirie does bookish and lookish things. She has made a bunch of chapbooks & you probably should too.  (Bio is Italian for speaker’s corner, right?) For those who answer no, Pirie has been published in 3 books, a few anthologies, many chapbooks and has a renewed love of canoes. www.pearlpirie.com has resources for templates.

btw, there’re a few guys who do the sex at tradition: http://www.ottawater.com/poetics/poetics04/04sexat31.html 

[Produced, in part, for the above/ground press 23rd anniversary reading/launch/party at Black Squirrel Books, Ottawa, September 10, 2016, and PHILALALIA, the three-day small press/art fair, September 15-17, 2016 in Philadelphia PA. Thanks much to Kevin Varrone for his help and support.]

This is Pearl Pirie's sixth above/ground press publication and fourth chapbook, after oath in the boathouse (2008), vertigoheel for the dilly (2014) and today’s woods (2014).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com