Poetry Unsalted: Smooth Erotica

By Syeeah Jarrule Bahshay

To be a poet:

She was told to sit on the faded red chair

(but it was honey she wanted)

With the gray exchange of leather that dated back to 1960.

It was a political nonescape phase.

She was already broken at the age of two.

And told—obey the maze

So you aren’t cut while they check your eligibility

(but it was honey she wanted)

Broken from the womb of folded mirrors.

But it was too late to drop pennies into the well.

All she wanted was to stop the tease of loneliness.

Her mother never smiled

Maybe never learn’t to.

So she was told to sit on the faded red chair.

And watch the gray exchange of trees vomiting up their leaves—

But all she wanted was honey

So her tongue began to scratch at the dryness.

She never smiled

Maybe never learn’t to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643348193

Book preview

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Poetry Unsalted

Smooth Erotica

Syeeah Jarrule Bahshay

Copyright © 2021 Syeeah Jarrule Bahshay

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-64334-820-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64334-819-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Love

Remembering My Childhood

Homelessness

After Divorce

Tuned In

Alone

In the Dream

The First Ride

Untitled

Another Winter

Untitled

Hospitalization in 1951

Lesbian Influence

The Morgue

The Lone Gentleman

Young Girls

His Autopsy

Before the Viewing

To All Poets

Ink like a sword will enter

the heart pierce death and leave

you sucking the root of

destructive narratives.

The flowering suet of spoiled blood.

Poetry is the mirrored box

Even before poets were born

Ink crouches in broken

And watches from another page—

Our private poverty—

As poetry climaxes against

Poetry in hot tumultuous chaos

From the weight.