Noelle Kocot

Bicycle Poem

There were cathedrals falling out of your eyes
And your arms were the handlebars
I held in an abbreviated dream of crushed petals
Strewn across the limpid avenues.

I said, "I have poems for you"
But my words were lost in the wind.
I said, "I love you"
And you drifted into sleep.

And so I said nothing and rode you in and out of the rooms
Where we had stretched the boundaries of the soul
Like an endless sheet
And I felt you waking up betwen my legs.

Brenda Shaughnessy

Cinema Poisoning

I will be your first, your thirst, your third.
I'll cramp up boxy, I will starlet out
in roads of light, or crimes, or words.
My second coming would not be allowed
unless your masokismet lifts her skirts.
So I will hold you flush against the glass.
Your voice & eye are muscle & they hurt
like prodigy too soft or quick in class.

My double agent, you would never ask
my miracles of sass & light to train
the athletes of seduction in the crass
voluptuary sciences like rain.

The sex & chess & cello fever's gone
from your myopic trust, my Avalon.