The Pacific: Deconstructed

Your hands, my hands, in close-quarter, 

Rubbed raw, the snake-coiled menace 

Branching to constrict. Floating: of ash and refuse. 

Body on vacation – thoughts back stateside. 

The impatient steam of city teeth, between the grates inside of cheek.

Bitten: we were the same shades turned into dark. 

Muddied over, o' salty brine, drink life back into my stigmata.

Hurt me. Baptize me. Absorb me. 

It is love, that I drain the Pacific of, with my thirst. 

Bite into cotton, 

The silver dollars that I offer Charon 

My tongue can feel slip inside. 

Upon the plinth, I was once pristine.

Scented of rose et cadavre 

Where you placed your altar, 

Ecstatically flame-licked.

Teresa de Ávila: Happy to burn for you… 

I of the rotund milk-giving breast, 

I remember how I was once a daughter. 

Of blood & bone, of root & wood 

My monstrosity: a pneumatic cloth of beauty.

(This found poem was deconstructed from five works by San Francisco Bay author Phynne Bellecieux in 2021.)