Four Poems
|
by Rina Shamilov
Virgin Birth “Grapefruit is a hybrid of lemon & orange. Snow is a hybrid of wish & lament.”– Yoko Ono My medicine mouth curls into A sick circle, The consumptive organ punctuating Air w/ spit; I’m accumulating my Body-image | body-still-life | body-fabric Disrupting the negative space Between meat & sinew¹, I’m Lamenting violence of my Birth & the steam floating Over Mama’s tongue as I passed Thru her piping body & came out Sweaty & disfigured like a Strawberry ripening² ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾ ¹Basar v’ adam – meat & blood ²Wet, unfleshed pores Artaud's Bruised Knee Semen stilling on my tongue & you, in my Shuddering silence, dent the Bone of my hip My hip-socket My liquid-bone Puncturing the vowel Of my lips Here in this buried noise Where bruises Attach like kisses To my neck, my knee, The pale-swan of my shoulder Blade, sit splatters of Your body’s limp Gleam Body Ode Sexed body, tender do your Ligaments thaw under rain You blush pink under the Cool-blue contours of patchy Dawn While clouds stretch like arteries Beneath morning’s fabric I watch you watch me As you lie there, in the bedroom, Your swollen eye sitting In the mirror, its stink haunting The room as a powder-soft ghost sifting Thru memories. Organ-machine, you bloat like sun Dropping its seedling You plant its warmth in your belly, The digestive tract jaundiced & opulent Illuminated sand – it sits within your tubes Clogging cement Protein of Violence My organ-symbol in flux, I plug your bone Into my foreign body & rot into my nerves’ Mottled root | My wet cunt gasps Like a gill – its hair’s Tendrils line the opening Wall as a spine | Your lips & teeth taste Ripe on my female tongue – You take the temperature of my Skin as it dries In your palms | You taste my stomach’s Thick parts: my particle womb & sour sac decant Into your mauve mouth | Rina Shamilov is a poet and visual artist; she is the author of the chapbook My Mother's Armoire (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and Hungering: Dance of the Figurines, which was named a finalist in Black Lawrence Press' Immigrant Writing Series. SHARE - Issue: 1.8 / April 2026 |