BONDAGE LESSONS

She models silver lickmarks,
a spatter of shiny bodice, bare sacrum—
another man’s notch
carved on her femur.

A plasticwrap dress,
fallopian membranes
oozing zombie oil
& a hint of menthol.

A man in a balaclava
watches her finger the rim
of her dinnerplate. (There are
nerves scribbled in the margins,
kidneys bleeding in the footnotes.)

Variation is the key: grill, purge, envenom.

No one reads the fine print. She is simply
skin & albumen under the fur & handcuffs.




AFTER TEXAS

Even now, legbound & pretty
in a yellow room, she
appears as a wrinkle
in the bedsheets, a puncture
wound in a girl’s thigh.

You know about seizures.
About the scent of iron
& water in the absence
of stimuli. An open collar.
A bit of torn pantyhose.

This place, with its mouse
eaten carpets, its scratched
wrists. The bend in her
elbow tastes like nectarines
& china white. You pull
a blanket over the sequence
of bodies that always ends
with a numb knife,
a bloodspecked dress.





FROM THE NEW DICTIONARY OF BODY POETICS:

skin. n. 1. thin, pliable membrane that enfolds the living animal body: As
in, she is silkwrapped in dermis, pulsing beneath the tissue. Fetishize her.
She is a naked peach splayed across the slick pages of Maxim magazine. 2.
pelt, processed flesh garment: see also, “second skin.” May indicate a
dysfunctional atavism, or lycanthropic tendencies. The wolfhide is surrogate
skin, empowering the wearer with the ability to mouth an entire rabbit, or
turn wine into blood. 3. the outer covering or rind of an object: As in
apple, sausage, pretty girl. (Peel them.) — skinned, skinning. v. 1. to
injure by scraping with an object, such as an oyster shell or a sharpened
spoon. To flay.

 

BY SUSAN SLAVIERO

Susan Slaviero lives somewhere on the cusp of a hellmouth, where she writes
poems & the occasional odd bit of prose. Her work has appeared or is set to
appear in Lamination Colony, Thieves Jargon, Zygote in My Coffee, ECTOPLASMIC
NECROPOLIS, YELLOW MAMA, & elsewhere. Susan's chapbook, Apocrypha, is
forthcoming from dancing girl press in January of 2009, and she co-edits the
online lit zine, blossombones.