'Never satiated' (published in Big Red Cat Issue #2)

published
Scream if you need to go faster, if that's your desire, say the old adage: the customer is always right, is king, and so survey their subjects with dispassionate eyes, demanding. I order some nibbles and remain at the bar with every fibre, despondently slotting them in like a 10p machine rigged against us, until the bowl is clean. The light dims and kitchen closes so I settle and slip home. Never satiated with another bite, another course; a cigarette with the ash hanging on. Drag this skinny fry through that mayo and swallow whole. I feel like an eclair slammed in a car door, dairy on passenger seat, on headrests, which detach if you were sinking as weapons with which to smash through a window and escape. I keep one to hand now. The rest is articulated elsewhere, not in words but senseless consonants clattering in gibberish. I have no business to settle with you. The conversation ends, and here you are: playing chess as both colours to win.
0

‘The Wedding Night’ & 'In amber’ – a duo of poems

published

‘The Wedding Night’ followed by ‘In amber’


The Wedding Night


He leans snugly upon her shoulder,

yawns unconsciously,

then readjusts his position and tuxedo

without a word,

his eyes shut;

the lingering smirk on his lips -

another brushstroke upon a canvas

bearing some elegant landscape of

comfort, security, serenity.


Her eyes stay softly open,

staring vacantly at the foot of the bed,

their feet at the end of the bed,

their legs cutely overlapping.

One arm cradles his weary head,

the other drapes across him -

toward his furthest shoulder,

so as to envelop him in forced affection -

the lit, crimson candle;

the cool kiss planted upon his forehead, the wax seal;

her stiff caress of his cheek, the stamp.

Her candid attempts at intimacy

ooze with a worn freshness

mirrored in her crumpled, but rippling, white gown;

still peppered with confetti, caught between the folds.

Her veil, unclipped and strewn across the carpet,

has served its purpose.


Her mind and body are fearsomely opposed.

She focuses, still, on some

thing not

present:

some ribbon untied,

some letter unsigned,

something

to explain the emptiness behind the aplomb,

the hollow numbness behind her painfully

prolonged grin toward the cameraman;

posed beneath a tree of cherry blossoms

that afternoon.


That was it, she thought -

turning solemnly to her husband,

as if to confront him silently with the truth;

she hears the quiet, piercing reality

tolling louder than those thunderous church bells -

I am not in love with you.


— Giuliano Piacentini © 2022


*****


In amber


I tap the glass.

You do not flinch.

Your gaze is glazed and fixed away

preserved in amber.

Now seconds pass.

Unmoved an inch.

Live like a well-kilned pot of clay

affixed in amber.


Can we touch

if you cannot feel?

I rummage in the dark

though I am petrified.

Did we touch

if you did not feel?

The blood I urge to surge

through veins, now petrified.


How we embrace,

it looks like warmth.

Present, till we relent

that our intents do not align.

I hold your face;

I feel your warmth.

A tear rolls down my cheek

and I can't speak. I say I'm fine.


— Giuliano Piacentini © 2022




Comments

Post a Comment