By: M.J. Stratton
Eros (Adorer/ L’amour)
I
there is a moon thickening crooning gripping
along my neck the womb
where I grow the words that soften
you
into lilies into palatable french into
the gummy tears black witch moths
find with fishhooks kiss
and then
take in
II
i found the scripture in the bottle
and the message said you can’t
lose an eye from nothing
that the mind is a peach pit rotting in the fridge when it should be
kissed
tucked back and into the clouds into the mouth-cheek the kayak into
the dream
III
I have learned I am never learning french
and that you are a dead-dog owner, crying
when you find half the black fly crushed in the sill
watch the wings twitch
IV
there is a craving a throat a bent knee
my father told me the fool didn’t
jump
that I am not a fool but a wanting
a stomach
a bin meant for shoes and the stray bits of road
picked up along the way
V
here is where tree limbs call cabs and windows tell you what it is
to play a piano under water
blue feels green to me
or green feels blue
and that means something doesn’t it
VI
pupa come from the word doll
comes from me comes from what it means to squeak in the night in the
alone in the at risk and
brimming
VII
my journal is heavy with phrases
like blue canoe the floating
tissue in this slack moment
and lemon morning
random words in french I write down
to forget
un sot trouve trojours un plus sot qui l’admire and so
what imagine if moth was a verb for kith
for a building for a beginning
and the toes that curl around eris
make her push and purr and only
then
VIII
french is green and rolling grass stains
on the knees of a stranger
eye catching my pearls in a mouth porous
with the words: you know
nothing about all of it
in a clearing in the wood
wash the knives by hand feed
and be fed the rivers the mouth
& the handfuls of fish crying for green
for klonopin soak sponge dreams the niceties that come
with tables made from chairs & your left hip
bone
write this down in fever use grass blades twigs found
in a stranger’s hair make them a part of it this
or risk the forgetting the spotless spalding
mind the feathered condor
Imago
I found the raven eyed door in his skin
& inside was a counter a clay bowl & bread
in its pupa form leavening lifting
I wanted so badly to taste it to feel it’s softness
& become it but the wings with skulls came
& sprouted & took & I watched the dough fly
out the way I came in
How would one characterize M.J. Stratton? Student. Disturbingly pale. Twenty-three years old and “a woman now” but can’t get used to the sound of that. And human. So fucking human. Imperfect and awkward and so embarrassingly frizzy-haired-human that she feels everything as deeply as you do—she just writes it down. Previously published in Oscilloscope Literary Magazine and Prometheus Dreaming, Stratton is an up and coming empath who wants nothing more than to connect with you through life and art.