Julie Kim Shavin

 Blank Elixir

I have seen the skin of the red dog
   the blood spread over it
small and growing mantle,
   foam in the mouth
and it cannot move.

It wants to lick ice,
  I give ice, but know
that ice is far too slow
   I send someone for water
cannot leave,
  gripped as it is in feral terror;
water does not come

Those of us who have lived
   half our lives in autumn
close to winter
   are intimate with this end.

(Where is the luster, the joy?
  he had demanded the day before,
and the question slithered
  through my veins, a blank elixir.)

The dog contorted violently, hurled,
   you son, SON OF A BITCH!
at his suffering. Not death.
   Actual words, and I was so? Proud.

I woke and was doped,
   lurching on blankness and thirst,
both constant, and red,
   like red is constant.

 

DinSomnia

 
Dumb blood of stubborn temple
the fractious tremble, wrong,
      just as [always\ religion – [wrong] –
botched nascence,
      haggard glum clutch
of butchered dream, right bird
          wending wrong wing.

Hunch of housework
        [forced supplication],
  ! first frail trill of Spring
        [torment to the malcontent],
agog but grimly knowing:
       sound sans sight, brunt
   of breeze on skin, sweetslayingscent –

stuck in glum clench,
wrench of waking,
          skank unsomnolence,
  mum drung of venal black brain,
      [clinch of midnight's droobing dung],
beauty      taboo      ballet

unsang-froid flophouse of flesh!
      lust to mesh in loveliness --
            furious saints within, rage --
       [saboteurs sickly singed] -
   birth bloody zzz's
            to zygote page.

Julianza (Julie) Shavin is a composer, poet, and visual artist.  Shavin has two chapbooks and a collection, She currently serves as Vice President of Poetry West (www.poetrywest.org); last year she was editor of the thirtieth annual edition of its literary magazine, The Eleventh Muse. She is Vice President of Blissfest333,  an annual arts collaboration for community-building and raising money distributed among various charities.