Terri Brown-Davidson three poems in Literary Potpourri

To write. To believe. To dream.
She wanted to be a writer, to drown
in word-washes powerful enough to sedate her
then coax her carefully surfaceward
so as not to induce bends
from the blackening swirl, the midnight,
of underocean life--

Observe the gorgeously lit fish, all aquamarines,
oranges, striped from their sad-moving
protuberant eyes to their exquisitely
fanning tails, and she among them,
The Lost One, whom sirened men have savored,
the taste of sea-salt, of foam, pungent on bunching mouths
ringed rounded like an eel's,
The Lost One crouching on sand
that wafts gritty around her, slow-drifting, grainy curtains
of disintegrating gray--
above her, her hair afloat, sea-ebony
as a moistening muff, her mouth rounding bubbles,
straining for a Circean silence while a green anemone
beside her prongs open to its secret heart,
extends a hundred fluttering tips
all desperate for sensation, the flutterings, oh
the flutterings like her strong-boned, inky fingers
stirring the sand until it gusts ever-higher, dream-calm
into her face, obliterating its pearl-pale radiance,
her black hair ghost-streaming
in the REM-sleep water that urges her only,
Forget--

To write. To believe. To dream.
She wanted to remain a writer. I dream of her
stroking papers translucent
with years' abandonment, my own desk square-edged
in a house sprouting dense with dust
rising like sweet silt to coat even my bare feet,
the exotickness of it making me yearn for some
cloister I've never imagined,
making me chant nam myoho renge kyo
though she's the sacred one....

In bed with this morning's biker, she watches
four patched walls ignite vermillion then a violenter pink,
the snail-crawl of beauty heightening
while her mouth grows damp with his root,
while she strains then seals
her ghostly gray eyes against that scarleting
assaulting dawn
whose outlines--once red--blur, meld,
fade with the dark-bearded face
pitted with stubble
tightening in crab-scuttle spasms of oh-so-rampant ecstasy--
Oh biceps, oh pecs, oh cock, the architecture of beauty
born only to disintegrate--each masterpiece is replaceable.
From her blanket-messed bed, where she's propped against
splintering wood, her desk remains visible, a poem, a jotting,
a phrase pushing its pinlike insistence into her throat
until it closes, opens, its esophagus fanning a hundred
delicate tendrils: "These longings throttle a life."
The dive, the unconsciousness wafting her white-bellied up,
the fat-pronged erection of thrusting repeated pain,
the ocean-stark sun-wash a bewilderment. A joy.

Her black hair Geishas her face.

home
	Three Poems by Terri Brown-Davidson THIS IS Ask me what it means when she enters that bedroom. Have you craved her. Knelt at the altar of her knees, worshipped wetness suggesting underlayers of ocean, sudden scarlet upflowerings of clit, of unconsciousness, of utterance, of stamen and juice so lush-lovely that words seem to float, to dissipate like smoke gusting from your mouth in the warmest, wettest ghostings-- Have you ever. Have you ever. Tasted her. Sampled her sinew--tongue crawl. Clung to her back ghost-whited with moon sliding and shimmering its otherworldly sheen. She's lovely when sex floods her, carnality and stark longing, the sweet drifting prayers that accompany an exquisite coming, when the breath's blasted shivering from her body-- This her bone-bred nature. To kiss her is to savor the grit and sourness of tongue, of sea-salt depths. We're hedonists, Stevens claimed. So want her and.the spirit of sex pulsing from leathers rubbed raw-shining by sun, by leather-seated rides on Harleys too huge for her tiny, quivering body, as she is--too huge--her spirit breaking its confines, bursting Pure Body's boundaries like accidents that snap cartilage then crush then maim-- the exquisite swagger of her walk testosteroned as she can manage, rough-edged, primitive in the style of a Gauguin madonna. This is my friend: Bitch Goddess, worshipper at the altar of loneliness, of abandoned loves, no whips, no riding crops to tap against work-blistered palms, a woman of burnt-umber fields, of farms stubble-fielded, decrepit against South Dakota winds, a woman craving smoke-grayed bedrooms, missionary position's closeness, who kneels at Buddhist altars though she's too sexed up for Eastern sacredness, for ashes on flat gold plates, for creamy vanilla candles, her covenant with the ordinary, with the wetness upblossoming from her Lotus-furled cunt and ass pearl-petalling and ready, ready, her tensed body singing Desire though there's nobody here except the orange and starving cat, the equally tattered chair, a fire gone flaxen to ash, everything in her burnished yellow-gold, ochre, as the flames she inhabits--too close to masochistic, yes, yes, yes-- © 2003 Terri Brown-Davidson
	THE LOST ONE To write. To believe. To dream. She wanted to be a writer, to drown in word-washes powerful enough to sedate her then coax her carefully surfaceward so as not to induce bends from the blackening swirl, the midnight, of underocean life-- Observe the gorgeously lit fish, all aquamarines, oranges, striped from their sad-moving protuberant eyes to their exquisitely fanning tails, and she among them, The Lost One, whom sirened men have savored, the taste of sea-salt, of foam, pungent on bunching mouths ringed rounded like an eel's, The Lost One crouching on sand that wafts gritty around her, slow-drifting, grainy curtains of disintegrating gray-- above her, her hair afloat, sea-ebony as a moistening muff, her mouth rounding bubbles, straining for a Circean silence while a green anemone beside her prongs open to its secret heart, extends a hundred fluttering tips all desperate for sensation, the flutterings, oh the flutterings like her strong-boned, inky fingers stirring the sand until it gusts ever-higher, dream-calm into her face, obliterating its pearl-pale radiance, her black hair ghost-streaming in the REM-sleep water that urges her only, Forget-- To write. To believe. To dream. She wanted to remain a writer. I dream of her stroking papers translucent with years' abandonment, my own desk square-edged in a house sprouting dense with dust rising like sweet silt to coat even my bare feet, the exotickness of it making me yearn for some cloister I've never imagined, making me chant nam myoho renge kyo though she's the sacred one.... In bed with this morning's biker, she watches four patched walls ignite vermillion then a violenter pink, the snail-crawl of beauty heightening while her mouth grows damp with his root, while she strains then seals her ghostly gray eyes against that scarleting assaulting dawn whose outlines--once red--blur, meld, fade with the dark-bearded face pitted with stubble tightening in crab-scuttle spasms of oh-so-rampant ecstasy-- Oh biceps, oh pecs, oh cock, the architecture of beauty born only to disintegrate--each masterpiece is replaceable. From her blanket-messed bed, where she's propped against splintering wood, her desk remains visible, a poem, a jotting, a phrase pushing its pinlike insistence into her throat until it closes, opens, its esophagus fanning a hundred delicate tendrils: "These longings throttle a life." The dive, the unconsciousness wafting her white-bellied up, the fat-pronged erection of thrusting repeated pain, the ocean-stark sun-wash a bewilderment. A joy. Her black hair Geishas her face. © 2003 Terri Brown-Davidson
	THE BUDDHISTS CHANT NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO And I chant, too, in my basement reading-room, a ghastly, rubbled space with white-bellied spiders spinning eerie silk cocoons: I slide my knees into a Lotus, push them into place against the ache of my thighs, the sear of my muscles whispering Give up, Old One-- Eventually Death Approaches--I murmur, sealing off vision till images of slow-crawling spiders haze eight-legged together into a reddening wash clustering, clustering, melding, afterimpressions of a scarlet lamp, a yellow chair, blurred in the cinematic vastness of nothingness against my lids while I'm locked into the words whose cadence hypnotizes me speechless till a black door pulses, a white window coalesces, What's Out There--Out There--? I whisper to myself: I know simply it's benevolent. When I turned forty, the shock of my ecstatic comings pushed me against then beyond a body-shedding transcendence, a high, pulsing tide trimmed glitter-edged with moon: now--a quieter phase--I relax beneath my lover while frost climbs the window, sprouts itself opaque till even the moon's obliterated, the last pathetic sliver glimpsed as silver, white, or ghostly mesmerizing while I close my eyes, listen to his soundless thrusts, oh fuck me till I'm unconscious, till Beauty swings down from darkness as a stain upon the ceiling rendered amazingly, abruptly, abundant, O map-ragged dampness, O yellow center's sun: he slides and angles and slides, my breath hoarsening, deepening, darkening; he pushes up into Mystery without even a final shout, whispering the mantras of passion, of love and body-abandonment, his eyes animal-intense while I ease my slick thighs wider, clasp his scratched-up back, turn passive as Holy Attendant. © 2003 Terri Brown-Davidson § § § Terri Brown-Davidson's poetry and fiction have appeared in more than 650 journals, including TriQuarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and Hayden's Ferry Review. She was one of the featured poets in the anthology TriQuarterly New Writers (1996). She has received 35 national writing awards, scholarships, or fellowships, including the AWP Intro Award and a Yaddo residency fellowship. She holds the M.A., M.F.A., and Ph.D. in English and creative writing. She can be reached at: tbd@idavidson.com.