toni scales poetry
MINERVA
She is
the book falling open to November,
sweet hidden wickedness of rhododendron,
her mouth a tuberose, pale.
Sucking.
She swells upon the eaves.
They touch at her thighs
to feel the texture of acrylics,
something frail, transitory,
beautiful.
She walks the beach in August,
sudden music out of nowhere,
houseflies and hypodermics,
the shadows that rustle
behind shower curtains.
Her need to be compelling is painful,
something purple and waxen,
a delicate blush.
Still, she writes the way
her body should look,
provocative, breathless,
stirring agony in its wake.
TRYST
He meets her the way
her father would.
In darkness, edges blurred,
not quite real.
Her hands fidget hot
at the sides of her dress,
those swollen cremations
of cakes, thighs, moonlight.
If only his face
held a sex, she thinks,
she might impale herself
upon it, content.
The splintering of silk
occurs when she´s turned away.
Later, at the barge, she senses
the quiet tang of the wind,
the boats that linger
disjointed at their ropes,
aching for shores
without syllables
as if Time were a portrait
eternally out of focus.
READING JOSHUA MILLER'S THE MAO GAME
I look at you, burn
as if I were beautiful,
eat up your world
to suck at my fingers.
I could love you as you are,
aquiline and strange,
screaming mouth seared
by the kiss of the wrong.
Long ago the specterboys left home,
motherless, thirsty comets,
tongues gouging holes
in the hearts of fatherless girls.
In a foreign country,
I stare down at my arms,
squint to see
your track marks
Where sweet-brown junk
eased music through veins
tender-bruised and delicate
as a six-pm sunset.