Poems from Hazel Everett

ANTHONY ( IF YOU COULD TOLERATE ME-)

I think you let me down by being kind.
I’ll forgive you for being young
If you can make me come before you. Or even being concerned
About my orgasm at all- the old man was more perplexed
By my teeth leaving a mark his wife might find. What a saint!
I’m the sinner,  I remind, rewinding
My role- from the innocent to temptress. I will always be represented poorly.
A caricature for other women’s insecurities, a tired trope.
I’ll forgive you for knowing all this, but still
treating me like a human being. I know I’m being generous to you
for being fool enough to believe
In my flimsy heart, dancing whorishly on it’s own ventricles.

 

LEMONS (MY GRANDMOTHER.)

I miss you, walking with a sense of relief.
I’ll stop worrying for your small lungs, made into paper weights around my
Steel desk.  You will never again
Drape your miseries around my shoulders, a prickle of English wool.
A Gin and tonic looming over your heart.  At the same time, I’ll miss feeling each wound for you,
infections three times my age. Each festering differently,
opalescent like your papered melanomas.