Love Me Nots
Matina L. Stamatakis

A war of flowers
left your palm

and curled southward;
a burnt ray of Technicolor kamikazes.

With distance I pictured them
stretched out,

thought I heard
dirges, Ave Maria,

whisper them

back into the winds,


teaching girls to dance
who have had no prior experience.


Dripped between the flushed pulp of toes,
my marionettes were tight
muscle mouths and hot bubblegum ooze,

faint blurs of sweat

(how they twirled questions and popped,
tongues out as reddened
embryos expelled from womb).


Into the light they wrapped hastily around nerve and bone.

1996 © 2006