Sugarcane

Valentine's Day Monologue\n\nI wanted to be your beautiful girlfriend\nbut I couldn't decide if you should come\nhome to find me naked, cooking or writing—\nIdeally, I would be sitting at the table, naked,\nwriting (doesn't matter what) and you'd come in\nto find dinner ready in the oven, the apartment\nsmelling delicious, and me looking the same,\nand there I'd be, naked (you see, all of my sexy\nlingerie is too tight and no longer sexy) and I'd\nbe something I'm not in the hopes that this time\nit'd be different. That I'd keep being the thing\nthat I'm not, that writer that can be brilliant,\nbut also sexy, and a great chef that keeps you\nhealthy, happy, and whole, and full of the love\nthat I have for you, but cannot truly show you\non any day, even the most contrived of holidays,\nbecause I'm too busy trying to manifest perfection.\n\n<center>[[→|little_me]]</center>

shitty poetry twine

Alternative Education\nHamilton-Wentworth District School Board\n\nHigh school for “at-risk” students\n\nbasement\npregnant teens\ndrug addicts\nand me\nno sunshine\nno books to read\nThe Price is Right on TV\n—prison\n\n<center>[[→|thumbelina]]</center>

''Carmen Feminae''\n\nI want to exist in pages, be\nborn from the word wombs of our mothers\nand crawl in the caves of the female canon\n\nPublish or Perish, an obsessive mantra\nthat ten years ago held a lesser woman\ncaptive in the dirty sheets of depression\n\nand now, buried in books with busy hands bound\nto keyboards, cursed by the blinking cursor and the\nblank computer screen, that could still be the death of me\n\nBarefoot and pregnant—\nwith words unspoken, dripping\nwith cadence and jubilant dread\n\nfor the inevitable comparison to other texts\nbelonging to an extinct species of modern femina poeta\nthat died drowned in a river, or head thrust into an oven\n\nYet besides the obvious variables,\none significant difference remains,\nI want to exist. \n\n<center>[[→|critique]]</center>

In bed\n\nIn bed\nthere are pirates\nwith dark eyes\nand eagles for hats.\nShe rides in on a polar bear.\nA white chariot for a woman\nwith no need for a knight.\nHowever distracted by\nthe bossy man\nwith the serpentine smile\nand legs for miles.\nDraw me up in\nthis dazzling array of splendor\nwearing nothing but for\nvast clichés of metaphor.\nThe demons and darkness flee\nat the sight of this bright, shiny new me\nand the muse, she crawls in amongst\nthe tangled fabric womb of English gardens.\nScary self-perceptions nap\nwith graceless abandon\nas mouths hang agape in awe.\nTell me which way to bend.\nNo longer a woman afraid to mend.\nHow do you discover land where man has been?\nCastle walls crashing.\nSomething is happening\nIn bed.\n\n<center>[[→|terrible_dreams]]</center>

The Feminine-Monstrous\n\nFear of the tall dark handsome\nMonster is Desire.\nconquer the mountain of man\ndelve into the cavernous\ndepths of disillusion\nto face the devil of humanity\nwith a stone cold glare\nthat erects—\na Heroine brought forth\nfrom the bosom of liberation\nto capture the beast\nand tame Him.\n\nWielding a weapon\nof phallic destruction\nin a petite grasp.\nDefend the\nPotemkin-esque\n mise-en-scène\nShe has magically crafted from\n historic-mythical-fantasy\nin a final attempt to salvage\n a white-picket-fence future unforeseen.\n\nIn the mania of academia,\nthe madness of female hysteria,\nsocietal constructs damage and confuse\nand cause for lovers to drink—\npsychoanalysis, the jungle juice of fools;\nBody bare, with legs in the air,\na modern Medusa, the female monster.\n Beware the classical curves and curls\nthat distract from the ancient fact\nthat She has a deeper, darker secret than He:\n Vagina Dentata!\n The Power of She.\n\n The Feminine-Monstrous\n will make man sorry.\n\n<center>[[→|carmen_feminae]]</center>

The slow seduction (of a woman with a cigarette) burns\n\nThere is something raunchy\nand yet seductive about a\nwoman with a cigarette.\nStanding in the snow\nwearing not much else\nbut for a fur coat\nand holding a can of beer in one hand\nand a lit smoke in the other.\nSitting in bed\ntopless, with kohl eyes\nand tears on rouge cheeks,\nwhile another woman watches.\nThis is the sadness of dying a little everyday.\n\n<center>[[→|no_ships]]</center>

The Terrible Game She Plays\n\nGet those skinny fingers out of my face\nbefore I bite them off\nor you break another heart.\n\n<center>[[→|slow_seduction]]</center>

There are no ships at the Boat\n\nWe all wear masks\nand have no connection\nexcept that our hearts\nbeat too fast.\nThe music silences us.\nIt finds us in the night—\nJust give in and dance!\n“It's okay, we all feel it too.”\nFound myself\nalone in the crowd\nand felt the magic\nof lips and bodies\npressed against each other\nunder the lights.\nThis is the day that\nI drowned my sorrows.\nAll of the ships are sinking!\nCome feel me out\nin the sea of people\nand we can dance\nthis disco tango\nalone together.\n\n<center>[[→|grey]]</center>

Crybaby Usagi\n\nNot much has changed since grade six,\nI used to eat sandwiches and watch Sailor Moon\non my lunch break, but back then, Sailor Uranus\nand Sailor Neptune were kissing cousins, not lesbians\n\nNow I still eat sandwiches and watch Sailor Moon\nbut with the advent of the internet, I am no longer\none minute late to class because I wanted to catch\nthe end of the episode, yet many hours late to life\n\nBecause I, like Sailor Moon, am a crybaby\nbut without a talking cat named Luna to wake me\nfrom my pitiful life as a girl who cries too much\nand is always late, without Moon Prism Power\nto save the Universe from the Negaverse\n\nBack then, it didn't feel bad to relate to Crybaby Usagi\nIf Serena can wail with that big dumb mouth,\nkick and scream and carry on, like an overgrown child\nwith pigtails, and still save the world—\n\nNow, reading poorly translated Japanese on the screen\nbecomes an exercise in the art of not-writing: if only\nI had Luna's transforming pen then I too could be\na magical girl, or whatever I pleased—even a real writer\n\n<center>[[→|brains]]</center>\n

magnets\n\nbare feet in sand sinking\ndesperate to make roots\n\nstuck\n(internal errors)\ncrashing ad infinitum\n\nmuddy perfection of security\n(breech)\nreboot, back on the concrete\n\npounding\nhearts racing \naway\n\nbrain noises \nblock\nwavelengths\n\nwords\nlooping in circles \na cycle of lost languages\n\nstr.replace(old, new)\n\nif self{{{ == }}}null\n then\n\ndoctor, I need something stronger\n\n\n<center>[[→|end]]</center>\n

Venezia\n\nHeat waves dance like ripples on a water's surface,\nalive in the August air, so thick one must swim through it\n\na solo sojourner, with nothing but a notebook \nand a desperate need for novelty\n\nstumbling uncomfortably along loose cobblestones,\nblackened, an ancient memory of the plague\n\nto arrive by land is to begin on the wrong foot,\nas this is a city that should be seen from the sea\n\ndangling limbs hang over the edge of the vaporetto\nhands tangled in the cord of a camera worn as a mask\n\nto disguise the displeasure felt\n\nin this living city, surrounded by swimming blues\nthe same as your eyes—whole oceans apart\n\nI would like to grow hideous webs between my toes\nif then I could walk across the water to fetch my heart\n\n<center>[[→|magnolias]]</center>

Critique\n\nI want to write about Bluebells\nbut there is a naked elephant in the room\n\nShe embodies women's messy lives, an\nekphrastic expression of excessive emotion\n\nNaked as the morning\nand tattooed like a migrating goose\n\nShe is an experiment in artifice,\na transgression of skin and viscera\n\nphotocopied, spray-painted, wallpapered,\ndecorated and sewn onto leather strips\n\nthe Woman's body borrowed\nand sacrificed on the altar of art\n\nStripped of her clothes and procured,\nher story has been stitched into her skin\n\nand becomes an immaculate landscape of scars that says, Welcome\nto the indelicate urban safari.\n\n<center>[[→|hands]]</center>

Magnolias\n\nI want to crawl inside you\nto hang a banner\nfrom rib to rib and\n\nplant a garden of magnolias\nso everyone knows\nthat here I have been\n\n<center>[[→|magnets]]</center>

T-9 Poetry\n\nPre meditated \natmospheric bum sex!\nYee ye boy.\n\nLousing nuking\nforked unlike\ndakota is 666 logo\nslow 6th enlighten\nme! Gravitas.\n\n<center>[[→|she_plays]]</center>

<center>Thank you for reading.\n\n''Pre meditated \natmospheric bum sex!\nYee ye boy.''\n\n<a href="http://www.swizzlekiss.com">swizzlekiss.com</a>\n</center>

So inside!\n\nWe move\nto the beat\nwith shards of glass\nin our feet.\nWe sweat\nand bleed\nbetween dirty sheets.\nWe meet\nand we cheat.\nLove is obsolete.\nSo let's drink, dance, repeat.\n\n<center>[[→|t-9_poetry]]</center>

Paul and the Dolphin\n\nI know aliens exist\nI've been to Mars\n\nOh, give me freedom\nfrom this wasted land\nI'm not supposed to be here\nI'm not made for this—man\n\n<center>[[→|untitled]]</center>

terrible dreams\n\nmen auto-tune in to our bodies\nmaking moves that mirror those\nreflected on a screen\nrestless in this city\nalternate realities\nhaunt dreams\nan awful lover\nwith the power to seduce\nin nightmares of such hyperreality\na widow bound with silk\nin shapeshiftee\nhouse of mirrors\nbad friends on screen\nin elaborate costumes\nstaring up at me with\nbleeding lips—\nand in this dream\ntrapped in a fun house frenzy\nexperiencing a hellish history\nthe light filters in and frees me\nin the dream shrouded in darkness\nforgot that you exist\nyou that gives hope for more than\na life lived as a solitary poet\nwriting of a past of pain\na future where my voice is not silenced\nhead stuffed into the mattress\nor told not to be inappropriate\nbecause I am.\n\n<center>[[→|feminine_monstrous]]</center>

Here on Lake Huron\n\nWe sit in mismatched lawn chairs\nsunglasses askew on our noses\nsmashing shiny cans of beer together in a cheers!\nfighting over whose turn it is to shoot the Red Rider\nwho gets to put the pellet through the aluminum skull \nof Arnold Palmer Lite, hooraying for a bulls-eye\nright between the “iz” of Arizona\n\nWhat could be more romantic than rubbing\nsunscreen on each other's red necks?\nOnly being pushed on the automatic mower\nwith the dead engine while you make\nthe sounds, as if I were a small child,\nbrrrrrrrrmmmmm, vrrrrrrrrmmmmm!\n\nJousting with wooden swords and plays on words\nto the death, by laughter\n\nYou jam lightness and youth into your back pocket\nwith the baggie of mushrooms, but I was high on you\nbefore we chewed; the cliché of the beach at sunset\nupset by the cheap brews and tuna melt amuse-bouche\n\nOh, my golden haired, gangly and awkward Adonis,\nwith long arms that lift me up onto those strong tanned shoulders,\none lesser than the other due to that damned discus injury;\ntoss me around, dangle me by my ankles with one hand, you stud!\nalways trying hard to impress me, like the time you scarred your forearm\nin the shape of a heart monkeying to the top of a tree\n\nTaking chase around the cabin,\nuntil we tumble, exhausted, into the grass\nyour blue eyes a shock against the night sky\nas we talk to the faces in the trees\nthe fireflies in the woods fireworks\nflashing around our spinning-dizzy-heads\n\non the humble shores of Lake Huron\nhere was love, like found glass\n\n<center>[[→|v-day_monologue]]</center>

Brains!\n\nBlood-orange skies warm\nthe freakish chill that threatens\nvulnerable knees\npoised to run but stuck staring at\noverturned, burning cars and\nsmashed television sets doomed\nto never wink through windows at\ndusk again\n\nFurious fantasies of the impossible\nshock the descriptors from my finger tips\ncallused from the strings of a bow\narrows aimed too high, made blunt\nagainst the basement bulkhead as I imagine\n\narchery, as a hobby, allows me\nto prepare for an uncertain apocalyptic future\nwhile grasping too tightly to the tangible past\n\nIf only I could see the sky from inside\nthis unchanging institution, that these books\ncontained some magic spells or potions; or moving\npictures to wake me from this dusty, forsaken headspace—\n\nI want to wake the dead\ninstead I am surrounded\nby the barely living\n\n<center>[[→|alternative_ed]]</center>

<center>Giraffa!\n\nthe red-faced sauna boys sway\nin red stained towels, spitting wine\nat each other, causing\na torch to flicker\n\nthe trust bestowed\nupon the drunken monk\nthat holds the torch is\nthe trust of the Sienese\nnonchalant\n\nthere is a jester who makes rude gestures\nwith a baton; hot, nasty breath on my neck\nslurring so unintelligibly, he cannot understand\nhis own language\n\nnothing can spoil the sweetness of the\nyoung generosity that pours\nwine and beer and rum down our throats\n\nfirecrackers!\nexplosions of flour!\nand ego-theatrics! startle crowds\n\nthe winning horse, a prized beast of such beauty and strength,\nall gloriously white\nand triumphant in the glow of the lanterns\nbeing set into flight\n\nancient stone assaulted\nwith wine-dances and rum-kisses\n\n[[→|venezia]]</center>\n

Hands\n\nLittle Hands pulls the words across the page the way\nSkinny Fingers might peel back the bark from trees to weave baskets\n\nWild women used to sit cross-legged in bed, domesticated,\nthough topless; chain-smoking rebels reveled in creating\nmagic with their hands.\n\nSkinny Fingers used to paint pixies in the spare room\nbut now she's out west somewhere on a farm feeding chickens,\nwhile Little Hands rips out her curly hair and spends her days\npressing little buttons, staring at a blank screen, uninspired—\n\nWe leaf through old books looking for trees and greenery,\nscaling the pages of an old copy of Kilimanjaro, desperate\nto see what our lives should be like, while others really live.\nLittle Hands waits for the moment when she can press pause\nand stare at her own hands to see if she is disappearing.\n\n<center>[[→|birds_borderlands]]</center>

Thumbelina\n\nI want to be as tiny as I feel:\n\nThumbelina cartwheeling\nskipping and somersaulting\nin a swamp of ink and morose\n\nwith little black fingers and toes\ndoing impressive acrobatics across blank pages\nforced by diminutive size to use the whole body\n\nto write by stretching and contorting wildly\nthen it would be okay to spend an entire day\nchoosing the right word, or doing the splits to make a dash\n\nIf only I was only as tall as the cross of the 't'\nI'd create an ellipsis with the prints of one little hand two feet\nand with a tiny body so tired from the weight of one letter\n\ncould curl up inside a comma\nuntil I have strength enough\nto dance back across that dash—\n\nand at the end with a period, death.\n\n<center>[[→|lake_huron]]</center>

<center><h1>[[''shitty poetry twine''|so_inside]]</h1>\nby Alicia Marie Contestabile\n</center>

Birds & Borderlands\n\nCharlie Sheen can't stop boozing and screwing whores\nFox News spews its views on unrest in the Middle East\nwhile we retire to our separate quarters\nin a world where there are\nmore billboards than birds\ngas at an uneasy 3.2,\nreading airport-paperback-bestsellers, \nan exercise in illiteracy,\nand New Jersey teachers get the boot\nas though 60:1 makes sense as a ratio.\n\nLet's ride off on the Twisted Sisters\nroute, pretending that there's no one\nat all that can tell us what to do.\n\nLittle Mexican princesses pose in their\nbedazzled Quinceañera dresses and\nwe count the signs along the hamburger highway\nthe way we list the names of rare Texan birds we\nsee in their adobe sanctuary, and whoops,\nthat's not an oriole, it's a kiskadee!\n\nAcross the border, we pose, cheap cerveza \nin hand, asking “Quanto? How much?”\nLittle Mexican children reach out\nto greet asking please, mister, please\nand we ignore them like we do the others\non our own home streets.\n\nWhataburger, Whatacrappyburger!\n“I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen.”\n\n<center>[[→|crybaby_usagi]]</center>

Grey\n\nWhen life,\nno longer black and white\nbecomes shades of grey,\neverything's experienced\nbehind a sheer film\nlike that of a widow's veil.\nIt is the taste of tears\nsalty and comforting—\nthe cool cascade\nthat leaves a web of charcoal\nstained to the pallor of cheeks.\nIt is like taking a deep breath\nof the suffocating stale air of a city\nwhere you do not belong.\nThat cold, damp feeling\nthat permeates the body\nfrom the wet hair on your head\nto the soaked toe of your boots.\nThe crunch of gravel beneath\ndragged feet, treading heavy\nin the slush of soot and snow.\nIt is the expanse between us,\nthat of distance and longing.\nOne grieves, and that is grey.\n\n<center>[[→|paul_dolphin]]</center>

Untitled;\n\nCute lesbian named Shaun\nsmokes a salad joint.\nI take a drag\nand fall\ndown, down\nthe rabbit hole.\n\n<center>[[→|in_bed]]</center>

Little Me\n\nI desire the oversized green army men\ncandlesticks in the Queen Street shop window\nI desire them because they remind me\nof the everyday domestic battles\nbelonging to the overprivileged and undervalued\nfew that struggle every day\nto merely get out of bed\n\nin our tiny apartments full of homeland treasures\nand competing computers\n\nI am literally blinded by the superfluous screens\nand the incessant Times New Roman\nthat screams at me:\nthese words are not enough, these words are not enough, these words are not enough,\n\nI want to play with swords, not words!\nI want to be free!\n\nI desire the oversized green army men\ncandlesticks in the Queen Street shop window\nI desire them because they remind me\nof the decade-long civil war inside of little me\n\n<center>[[→|giraffa]]</center>

Alicia Contestabile

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