Rae Pater

Frog Prince

The frog mouth was so big
I didn't see it coming.
Caught me in my prattle pinny
shaking down a nest of pins.

They fell into my legs,
your stick pin doll with ice-pink lips,
who wets her eyes and sighs
for youto palace up your lilypad
and ribbit home.


Playing Dirty

Yo there slut fairy,
spitting up your morning juice -
have your retarded highchair-fest
with your bottle-fed hand-reared friends.
Gurgle last night’s dredge
into the burps and farts
of frosty lime succulents.

One wink out of line and you're mine.
I'll take you out like a zipper line,
like a freak to a ball, like a tiny bikini
when the weather is fine.

Hold your head and moan cos you're sore,
best watch your back on your way
out the door.


Wordless

Once she held him in her arms all night
like a sled into the void.
Tangerine lips and white pelt
knocked on the door of her dream -

he signed his name along her back,
lassoes of Indian ink
wrapped around knots of bone;
secrets written in magenta trawls
of nails over skin, blackberries
raised along their scarlet vines,

crumbs and dust
collected in remembrance
of that she cannot name


Beginnings of Lightness

Their bodies, luminous eggs,
glob along beaches,
golden ovals on black shoals of shingle.

They bounce against the edges of cities,
quiver and wobble beneath the velvet cloth
upon which the moon glimmers a rib-bone.

Endlessly pining, they seek
to engage one another, never realizing
the birth they long for is their own.
Slick, thick, oily membrane envelops them
repelling friend and foe alike.
They remain trapped in their aloneness,

cast about themselves for points of view,
for the blade of truth that sets them free.

Alas they bobble,
little bobbleheads -
one by one
down the streets of the enfolding years -
blind, deaf, dumb,
reproducing in brief mitosis,
storing data in streams of binary codes
to explain why they are alone.

A collection of knowledge, opinions
from this one and that,
in attempts at longevity,
the hope that accumulated chicken scratches
might someday illuminate -

never realizing the perfect completeness
of their viscous egglike forms,
missing the white light that flares within.


Tryst

i
See emeralds dance in her mind,
the lewd way they wink in the light,

how her hands travel, so far -
all the way -
over the planes of his back,
grasp the lift and curve of muscle
with pin-tipped fingers.

How her tongue is cocked to fire.
Trails of flame
like witch-burnings -

a tryst of skin.

ii
See her ruby teeth,
how they glitter in the night kitchen
as she turns to go.

She's left a lamb cutlet,
new potatoes in fresh chopped mint,
and the other half of her cab Merlot.

The baby dozes,
rocked by her red breath lullaby.

The dream has broken
into an a cappella over cracked tongue
and her heart-
a broken bell