Hannibal Lecter’s Whore: Blog Of

I open the envelope as you sleep in,
and I see
me, my hair strawberry,
my skin bronze,
my body, taut as canvas,
being held playfully in your virile arms–
arms stout as tree trunks–
in our backyard
under the shade
of the eucalyptus.

The bittersweet pang of nostalgia creeps in
as I carry the photo to the fridge
and place it under a magnet like a time capsule.
I know that lump in my throat will dissipate
as I swill my morning coffee
as I feed the baby
as I make the shopping list and
wait for you to rouse from slumber.

Heather Millikan

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours’ pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and panties,
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women’s breasts that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week’s tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively fucked his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are masturbating,
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes.

so cunning
so cunnilingual
the lifestyle she had led
poking tongues between thighs
all the time in her hometown
or in the city where she studied
the anatomy of girls
at some all-girls school
where taxonomy was limited
to butch and femme
where even clips
not clits
were controlled by the nuns
all of whom were repressed
where everyone was in love
with everyone else
(or so she said)
—but only for a week
swapping spit and tongues
lovers and partners
in shockingly modern
melrose place-fashion
and she didn’t care at all about fashion
just books and music and neither did he
when they met in college
—instant connection—
only he was a boy
and the only boys she liked
were brad pitt and jude law
plus she liked reading cortes
(carlos not the conquistador)
else it was purely girls
the type who could stick
their fingers up her center of gravity
her favorite spot
it didn’t matter whether
she loved them or not
whether she really knew them or not
whether they stank or not
in her favorite spot
so long as she had their names at least
and they were beautiful
(hmm no they didn’t have to be beautiful
whatever)
anyway he and she finally got together
and he didn’t really know
what led her to fall for him
previous lifestyle and all
always curious about
and experimenting with her body
but experimenting only with girls
he cannot at all comprehend
henceforth his fear of her loving
his fingers and tongue
inside her
because it can remind her
of the feel of girls inside her again
now he’s scared
of her longing
for womanly arms and womanly scents
doesn’t want her to draw water
with the cup of her mouth
from womanly wells
he’s scared each time
and all the time
he creeps a finger in
once he realizes
she’s wet enough for it (if not yet
he goes down on her
to help her get wet enough for it)
what calms him down
is the intermittent
yes
escaping from her breath
yes as if a brief response
to an imagined proposal
yes
of living the rest of their lives
with each other yes
regardless of his boyness
yes

and finally she comes

home to him

yes

Sappho’s “To an Army Wife, in Sardis” stresses how powerful love can be. For some, cavalry or infantry corps, or the oars of the fleet are the finest sights, but the author argues that whatever one loves, is the most beautiful sight of all. Sappho presented Helen as an example of how a man’s views and priorities (that is, Paris’) can change all because of love. The poem mainly talks about the persona’s longing to Anactoria, and the love for her that goes beyond limits.
    “On the day of death, when my bier is on the move” by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (under Arabic and Persian poetry) talks about the paradox of death. The persona is trying to say that there is still life after death – a life that is far more ideal than the life that we have in this physical world. The persona believes that the grave is just a shroud over the place of eternal bliss, and that though a tomb seems to be a prison, it is actually a freedom of the soul. In author’s own words, “What seed ever went down to into the earth which did not grow? What bucket of water ever went down and came out not full?” Truly, the author presented statements in the poem that seem contrary to common sense yet may perhaps be true.
    Bertran de Born’s “I love the joyful time of Easter” (of Provençal poetry) talks mainly about war and violence. The persona in the poem feels great pleasure when he sees armed knights and horses. He attains great joy from violence; it pleases him when the skirmishers make people run away, when castles are seized, etc. De Born also presented a stern perception that a man is better dead, than alive yet beaten. He described chaotic scenes wherein neighing unfastened horse wander over the wounded and the dead, and of little and great men alike fall in the flanks of corpses, yet seemed to derive pleasure from these. The author here, simply put, portrays violence like an ordinary subject matter, and at the end of the poem diverges from war to love.
    Analyzing the themes, we can observe that these three poems exhibit universal human emotions, yet did a little twist. Yes, Sappho’s “To an Army Wife, in Sardis” talks about love – a universal emotion, yet the poem is about her attraction to a woman (Anactoria). Sappho’s depiction of passionate love therefore, is not the typical heterosexual love, but a homosexual one, particularly woman-to-woman love. This theme may have created a shock in her time, but now, such theme is already accepted by modern literature readers.
    On the other hand, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s “On the day of death, when my bier is on the move” also did a little twist on our notion of death – a very general theme. For most of us, it may mean end of life and of everything. Yet the author presented the persona having no pain at leaving this physical world. Yes, the idea of a paradise after death is a Utopist thought, but the author presented it in a way that is swaying to the readers. Personally, I see this work as being influences by the dominant philosophy Sufism, in which everything has a meaning that is in relation with God. I believe that the idea of a “god” has been presented indirectly in the poem, but is reflected in the author’s notion of an after-life, of a paradise, and in his own words, of “union and encounter”.
    Provençal poetry, on the other hand, is primarily devoted to the subject of love, hence it is also called as courtly love poetry. However, Bertran de Born’s “I love the joyful time of Easter” is shockingly cruel for it talks about war and violence. Personally, I see this as somewhat similar to a known saying that man is a beast for the poem seems to portray human nature and his inclination to liking violence. The author depicts the violence of men versus men, which is but a universal scenario. What is even more shocking is that at the end of the poem, the theme abruptly changes into love – still the identity of Provençal poems.