Come on: let’s ruin lives
to each other. Let’s marry
our businesslike hurts, our lusts.
To happily ever after
transmute lust into prayer.
I think you
a kitchen knife,
or a lifetime of raspberries.
And you, you speak like Amsterdam streetlamps.
There’s a loose
knowing down my bones
we’re meant to smolder
in apricot blossoms.
Marry me as only you
could slit me open – and you do –
so lily-faced poems come tumbling
down the tablecloth.
At our wedding we might drink hazy weather
from tiny Chinese cups.
Take off your clothes
with all the migration of grief
settled in their outskirts.
Tell me (that kingdom
of irises under your eyes
blooms and blooms and blooms)
how your tongue
got tangled in the brambles
of the first kiss
and all about
the butchering novelty of light
on those sheets where you
had just lost
your silky virginity.
How long has it been since
you last were asked
to unfurl
the creamy narrative of your nipples?
Lourdes Verónica is a Moscow-born translator and teacher currently living in Rome. Her poems were featured in In My Bed Magazine (Canada), the Silver Birch Press I Am Waiting Poetry Series, Lavender Review, Window Cat Press, Winamop, Chantwood Journal, and Fable Online, as well as nominated for 2015 Pushcart Prize. Her poems in Spanish found their home in the Margen Cero Magazine.