Poetry Suite by Devon Balwit
“prove to my daughters that, though they bleed,
they are world makers”
Poetry Suite by Devon Balwit
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Strange Accidents
Left to myself, an only child, I read The Story of O, The Painted Bird,
was educated in the violation of bodies, and the two of them,
screaming behind closed doors, confirmed how easily one
could become a refugee, shouldering what one scavenged,
preyed upon by sweet talkers and brutes, weaknesses best
secreted away. The binding of limbs, intrusion of dildos,
tongue and fingertips, the popping out of eyes with a spoon,
horrified, but better to know that the casual cruelties
of the playground were just a prelude, that my smooth sex
would be penetrated by many things. Nightly, I reached
for these tutors, retreated with them unobserved, tried to puzzle out
when war would come, who would touch me in such a way,
why O desired degradation, what passions germinated in my
dark places, what strange accidents make and unmake us.
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Censor
Some days I wonder what my life would be like
had I stayed gay, able to stroke the soft skin
of a woman’s breasts other than my own,
lap the loam of her sex, claim otherness.
Now I try to have it both ways, the wink, wink,
when a lesbian speaks of her wife, the receptive
lean towards a tattooed butch, but my husband’s
cock in me, his otherness outside me as well.
Always ambivalent, I want something, someone,
to push against, push, to rage against difference,
but live with it, too. Now, I hear, one
doesn’t have to choose, one’s genitals needn’t
correspond to one’s name, one’s dress, one’s
pronoun. One needn’t pick this one or that one, or
a month of Sundays. I thought myself so cool
with my womyn, my wimmin, my leather, my labrys,
and then with my marriage, my bellies, my babies.
But now, I know myself chickenshit, pleading the children,
my husband, when I withhold my stories, archive my
voice in the dark of my basement. It’s not what they
think, but my own censoriousness, perp-walking me back
into silence. Some days I’m sorry, and some days, I just am.
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I want to mantle my daughters’ bodies
I want to mantle my daughters’ bodies
stand pugnacious at the doorways of their ears, their sexes
snatch arrows of derision mid-arc, no wounds shall come of them
I want to slide between my daughters and their lovers
wrap arms around those enfolding them, whisper careful, do no harm,
give her pleasure, my hands ready threats by testicle and jugular
I want to form testudo around all daughters on all streets
clack shield and spearpoint, lay ambush, leave the bodies of rapists and molesters
for dark birds to consume
I want to enter their blood, coursing and flowing,
give them pride in its nature—this red thread stitching generations,
this ancient libation, enfleshed, elemental
I want to prove to my daughters that, though they bleed,
they are world makers, atom smashers, pleasure seekers, pleasure takers,
claimants of every right due thinking-kind
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teeter-totter
only daughter
sometimes dad’s
sometimes mother’s
hold card slapped down
beat the other
scold or coddle
tilt the bottle
austere baroque
give one a poke
artist’s palette
Europe’s ballast
warp and weft
leaves one bereft
through slam of door
and shake of floor
a dangerous game
of flesh and name
fight then fuck
flinch then duck
the mobile dangles
pendant tangles
on fulcrum bend
the world upends
the years proceed
with word and deed
and distance buffers
what is suffered
what lonely fun
to be just one
and carry both
till set of sun
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Love Dart
O to plunge my gypsobelum
deep within you calcareous
chitinous to be whatever
gender frotteur frotteuse
to be your zhe hermaphroditic
licking biting Aphrodite
touching tentacles genital
pores to do you as I would
you do me whorled world
worldly imprecise seeking
a little death less dearth a
fullness of allohormone
and hemolymph a re-
configuration of our co-
pulatory canals hours
to do with as we please
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Header image courtesy of Theo Gosselin. To view his photo essay, go here.
Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon. Among other places, her recent poetry can be found in: 13 Myna Birds, Anti-Heroin Chic, Birds Piled Loosely, Bonk!, Dream Fever Magazine, drylandlit, Dying Dahlia Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Journal of Applied Poetics, MAW, Rat's Ass Review, Rattle, Red Paint Hill Publishing, Referential, The Basil O'Flaherty, The Fem, The Fog Machine, The Yellow Chair, Vanilla Sex Magazine, and Wicked Banshee Press.