MUSIC


ARTS



CULTURE
 

Home

Mission
Music
Concerts
DVD | Film
Stage | Dance
Poetry
Visual Arts
Interviews
Features
Best Of The Year
Stories
Books | Zines

Contributors

Newsletter
Links
Contact
Make A Donation
SEARCH
Archive

Free Downloads

Visit Us On Facebook


POEMS by CINDY HOCHMAN

Love and Medicine

A man is just a y chromosome with pheromones and no aorta
which often leads to a myoconjugal infarction. Have you ever
gotten in touch with your femoral side? A woman is just an
x chromosome who falls head over Achilles' heel with all her
ex-es, and doesn't know y.

Do you remember that lover's quarrel we had at the
Isle of Langerhans? And it got worse by the time we
reached the Phalanges. Genitally speaking, we went
around in cervicals.

Menopausal, hemorrhoidal, steroidal, post-coital,
plans spoiled, hands coiled, hearts soiled, disloyal.
We toiled, a slow boil.

How long could we lay in that hemorrhagic marital bed?
We needed band-aids, tourniquets, clean sheets with
hospital corners. Home is where the leak is,
and I didn't care for your bedside manor.

Spider veins and cobwebs, we weren't varicose,
choking on humble crow. Oh what tangled feet we webbed,
we wept, defeat. You were so full of groom and doom.
The only remedy for that is a de-bride-ment.

Is there a doctor in this house?
(Turn your head and kiss me)
Is there a lawyer in this house?
(Turn your head and divorce me)

I know you think I'm being facetious, but this is not meant to be humerus.

I wouldn't fibula.


Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn (1980)

                                           Ragweed summer
                                   July and August lust-months
               2 citykids, cross-legged - - was it a crate or a keg?
                             Merchants of Menace! Selling cod and haddock

Wildbaby, boozy & bright
              in the blaze of your gaze
black pom-pom eyes, drugged & radiant
      white punk rock hair
        bee-spanked lips
                                                      hot as igneous rock

Poet Laureate of Holocaust Park
                 and sweet courtesan of your tan van (all silk & sediment)
making poems from the sand in my hands

                                        Shiver me timbers!
          Sailor boy & first mate
                                   the rip & snort of our waterlogged 20's
Walking the gangplank
                                                     dove into mist-whipped love

                                           if you see the boat a-rocking,
                                          don't come a-knocking


Emerged tan and tumbled in double entendre

                                                   Deluge of Drama!
                                       pelicans picking our pockets
                               right under our white-powder noses
                                          as we spun our golden wheels
                                                   mocking time
                                                       eating fistfuls of sun

                           Back in our dock-swapped flophouse
                                   stomping on bathtub grapes with our happy feet
                                       laughing unto cramps in the roiling heat

But this too was an awful rowing

As we stood there, weather-beaten, at the cruel mouth of the Bay
           wind-less and wing-less
                     eating fistfuls of moon
and baffled by the undertow


For You


And you were there
first date, when we took a surrealistic bath.

And you were there
through sexless nights of moons and tantrums.

And you were there
propelling me safely over anxious mountains.

And you were there
through violent valentines and all our gentle wars.

And you were there
through tea time and toxins.

And you were there
with your thumbs raised, your eyebrows raised, your penis raised, and your guard down.

And you are here now,
un-sheepish, leading the herd.



Scars From a Biopsy of the Breast

"War wound," the chesty technician calls it,
the site where the surgeons
cut       cut       cut
checked for cancer and came up empty.
"Want one for Christmas?" I hiss at her, unamused.
"Red is a popular color," she coos, through hot lips
and the steel eye of the machine.

I feel small and imperfect under her kiss.



Baring my Soul

Saturday is poetry day
I will take off all my clothes
and write a nekkid poem.


(previously published in The Elements/Scars Publications)

Cindy Hochman is a legal proofreader from Brooklyn, New York. She is the co-host of The Green Pavilion Poetry Event, the editor-in-chief of First Literary Review-East, and the associate editor of Poetry Thin Air Cable Show. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Quarterly, The Stray Branch, Nomad's Choir, CLWN WR, The Brownstone Poets Anthology and Alternatives to Surrender (an anthology). Her book reviews appear in The Pedestal Magazine, New Mirage Journal, and Coldfront Magazine.

 

 



(c)2008 - 2016 All contents copyrighted by AcousticLevitation.org. All contributors maintain individual copyrights for their works.