1. The Dead Woman and Sex
The dead woman is thinking about sex.
Its renowned generative power, the excitement of being alive.
She remembers that orgasm is called the little death.
She thinks about anatomy, and how hers is dissipating.
She is fucking the universe.
She is melting, melting.
She is using her material self to make new things.
She is generating the future.
The dead woman knows the taste of ashes, the dryness in the mouth.
Her hands have bled from gardening, from the rough embrace of roses.
The dead woman remembers ice cream, perfume, the feel of a cat’s fur.
She is becoming those things.
2. More About The Dead Woman and Sex
She is thinking about you, the dead woman is.
She is thinking about the hands that touched her diminishing body, and the hands that wanted to.
She is thinking about the living bodies she wanted to touch, when she was alive, and those she did.
She remembers how her breasts fell to her sides when she lay down on her back.
She is lying down now.
Her breasts are falling.
The dead woman believes you, but she doubts the others.
The dead woman is tired from waiting.
Why is the dead woman still here?
There is the door; why doesn’t she go through?
All of her rub up against each other.
That is the sound you hear, that whispering.
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This week's prompt was: " … Marvin Bell and his Dead Man Poetry …
"The form is comprised of two sections. One is titled “The Dead Man and …” and the second “More About the Dead Man and … .” All lines are written as sentence lines and enjambment matters quite a bit. The first two lines generally turn back on each other. The two versions seem to discover or expose different things about the Dead Man, one more internal in nature, the other external."
[Sometimes, after writing a poem, I feel like having a cigarette.]
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