THREE POEMS
I grip Driver’s
hard little pot belly
He reaches up my oil cloth
daisy dukes
We fly through piles of exhaust
past a woman painting her nails
with iodine in the street
A styrofoam plate of wet cat food
on the porch of a condemned building
Rotating spit of red pork
Can collectors in frail brocade jackets
That bird-chested sadist
takes me to his low cool house
with black carpet and mold
in the shape of Orion
Wipes the sweet paste
of tailpipe emissions
off my neck
Says he wants to oblivion me
pierced scorpion in hand
Men are so
small and beautiful
I limp home
rolling with sweat
and deranged
bliss
away from the heaving intersection
and the ugly daddies
and the filthy kittens living
in the hysteria vines.
Greek vowel sounds in the churchyard below
Kittycat goes to town on the butter dish
a meter from the big bed
where last night's man
feigns sleep
His penis was too little
to stay secured in me
No match for my four lane boulevard
Poor thing
kept slipping free
Bless his little
noble effort
and the butterlicker too
who doesn't look up
as I slink from the bed
and out the door
doves moan all over the trees
she walks on streets bulged with emptiness
stealing glances
gold slice of card game
through a screen door
women who drink from brown bottles
play for feathers and other witchcraft
in a bathroom window
a man takes a french whore shower
dime store accord slickening his neck
thick with coarse silver hair
night of the gardenia
pumped from a pretty glass bottle
to cover the smell
a drunk on the train tracks
twists like a throttled dancer
not blind to life's secrets
he slides madly across the gravel
a spray of basalt and quartz
and bum wine
she levers herself into an abandoned house
armed with an oily red crayon and a stolen lucky strike
goring the pocket of her little white britches
fire and language
light up the unfinished room
savory smoke toils across
a steel beam left halved
un-uttered
tufts of coral insulation
and her wall of sticky red words
overheard from the radio
and boys at school
and her own mind pulsing like an infected cut
on a swollen finger
HITLER PUSSY
RUNT TIT
NUCLEAR
and other crude insignia
she remembers the light
a tangled silver necklace
through the boughs of a dogwood tree
her head in the duff
then rolling off and away
as the boy
the one with the red bicycle
made his clumsy incision
she writes on the wall
another secret word
then just stands still
and listens
beating in their hot rooms
all those hearts on the hunt
[POETRY]
[08/15/25]
[08/15/25]
CHARLIE STUIP is a poet and video editor living in LA. Her work can be found in Spectra, Currents Mag, Antiphony Journal, and on NoBudge.