Jennifer Perrine is the author of No Confession, No Mass (U of Nebraska P, 2015), winner of the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry; In the Human Zoo (U of Utah P, 2011), recipient of the 2010 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize; and The Body Is No Machine (New Issues, 2007), winner of the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. Jennifer teaches courses in creative writing and social justice and directs the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, visit here. ---------
The Mystic Speaks of Attachment
The mystic sits at the front of the hall,
cross-legged, intones, Attachment prevents
us from real love. As if one body, all
our heads bob up and down, nod our assent
to his wise words. We each want to open
wide to another, no need for control
or possession or desire’s keen talon
we’ve honed to rip, to rend, leave nothing whole.
After, in the bathroom, the mystic’s wife
leans against the sink, studying her arms
in the mirror. On each, an angry welt
flares. When she spots me staring at the scars,
she holds them out: faint tattoos that once spelt
names of old lovers, scraped off with a knife.
Lust | Chastity
Desire works its sliver, splinter,
snag that undoes my lace,
a hurried unfurling, a gaze
shot through a prism, your face
multiplied, magnified, your voice
rumbling in the echo
chamber of my brain, how it swells
like a river, this slow
current hastened by rain, dragging
me swift around the bend,
your whisper a murder, water
that drowns. No way to mend
what’s rent, cover this coveting,
this swoopstake, cropneck want,
this ghost that stalks all my shadows,
crouches in every haunt
where I try to hide, to escape
your moan, a growing hymn
that muffles the murmur of vows
barely remembered, dim
distant beacon flashing from shore.
It’s no promise that keeps
me from the plunge, the risk of flood,
lungs full, diving your deeps—
only I know the liquid thrum
I’ve imagined—the lick
of salt where your shoulder meets throat—
would be undone. Our quick
fingers would swallow all sound save
the roar as we combust,
burn through every stitch, our conjured
thrill now ebbing, now dust.
Mobility
Begin with the dreams
where you’re once again
a teen, alone, a strange
city to navigate
without a map: the network
of trains, buildings that turn blind
eyes as you pass, crisscross of streets
without signs. Fumble inside: halls
that lack doors, elevator that lifts
to an unmarked floor, opens to rooms
of raucous men, women’s red laughter. Now
you’ve entered, there’s no way back out—only
two kids in the corner—greasy-haired, tattooed—
who beckon you close, so you crouch low, listen
as they whisper, “We’re squatters here, too.” The warm wet
air creeps over your skin as the dresses and suits
exhale mirth and gin, and against the thin reedy sound
of it all, the firm whack of your boot against the wall,
pounding a steady, heady thump that breaks through the chatter,
interrupts the revelry, and as the two kids join, feet
and fists cracking plaster, forces a silence, a hole, a breach.
The faster you beat, the more sunlight pours in, until you’ve hacked
a wide, terrible grin, a maw into which you lean, an exit
into wind that tears at all the people climbing the facade, picks
and ropes, the slow hoist, the vast haul yet to go, and you no longer know
whether you still want out or to pull everyone in, or to tear down
the whole shining structure, level its concrete and glass, raze its wonder, leave
not even a glimmer of that once distant place for you to remember.