Another story out…

Actually, make that another story and three poems.

The story’s off to Alison Tyler’s Better Bondage Erotica.

Some folks I know have started a new lit-mag called Feather Lit and I just zipped them a few poems that are bit too…intense for many venues.  If you write poetry or micro fiction (500 words or fewer) and it’s of an erotic bent, even in an allusive way–maybe especially in an allusive way–you might want to check them out. They haven’t put out their first issue yet, but once they do, I think everyone should check them out.

Just because.

Here’s one I may send to Feather Lit for the next issue. I think it’s sexy. What about you?

 

Surfer

I wrap myself in the gorgeous terror of knowing

These silk-seeming waves can crush bones.

I ride the waves, but it’s not like riding a horse.

Even a wild horse can be broken,

But waves will only break me as they break,

Unless I give myself over to them, acknowledge

They have all the power. The surfer has only balance,

And I could lose that at any second and plunge head over destiny.

 

That’s why I do this. Otherwise I could stay on the beach

Like those girls in full make-up and dry bikinis

And never even get my hair mussed up.

But it’s the possibility of danger I crave,

The fact that as I ride the curl of a wave

I might be riding my own doom.

When I saw those videos of the tsumani devouring

Japanese villages and farmland, I was half-envious, half-wishing

I could have been there to be annihilated

By water reclaiming the land

It never wanted to let go in the first place.

 

 

I don’t actually surf. I didn’t move close to the ocean until I was in my thirties, and at that point I was too broke to get into a new sport. Now, in my late forties, I can afford the gear and lessons, but with several old spinal injuries, I’m not sure the pleasure would outweight the potential for nasty, aching, unfixable pain. The lure of the ocean, though, is strong, so I body-surf and walk by the water and dream of being reincarnated as an otter or a selkie.

(Yes, I am sipping Scotch and feeling rapturous. How did you know?)

 

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