Ruth Zamoyta-O'Toole: Sample Poems
From Otsu and Other Poems
Otsu (excerpt from the Water section)
warm mouth kiss my blue lips
and icicle lashes.
(my eyes the color of the sea;
yours the color of heaven)
swim into me, warm infusion of rosemary damiana.
thaw my limbs,
let them move again,
thaw my scales
so i can touch you,
my gills
so i can suck you in, my salty sustenance.
Musashi,
take my hand,
dip into my hotspring--
steam with me dear in the moonlit water.
desert traveler, you know the worth of water.
(i depend on it for life--
it does not turn away from me)
stew with me,
swirl
in a whirl of black and white,
each serpent
sucking the coccyx
of the other.
thrust
your finger inside me, your hand, your arm (deeper), dredge out the black barnacle rooted inside.
thirst,
drink my divinity, hot blood, sweet unction,
liquid rubies beading on your slippery skin.
wash over me,
wash into me,
absorb me into you--
all but my small black heart--
that belongs to the other man
you once were.
From Otsu and Other Poems
Oyster Haiku
In memoriam Mir Aimal Kasi
Dark and barnacled
The oyster conceals her charm
Her mute white sentence
NEW WORK
Dragonfly Orgy at Bullfrog Pond
the curling of male into female
shiny blue pickup sticks
strikes bullfrog gossip, blue jay news,
the wind's approach like a big machine,
rivulet's trickle past Marlboro--
looking for somewhere to plug in--
the aphid alights on my leg
cut by thorns and cradling papers--
I stroke the joys in my pocket,
the one with your eyes
on the other side of time,
quantum fly has lost her children,
and the frog carcass says why
and where they are
The Go-Between
My love makes me her lyre.
She is not my song,
but what I sing.
She slices time.
She cannot last or leave
or ride with me awhile.
She is the landscape's hesitation,
the cutting, the arrest
that keeps me going.
She has no want or sentence--
I have nothing else
to play on.
And the wind breaks the lark,
feeds the wolf her howl...
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