In the mood for you – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton
The richness of the butterscotch sunsets, heated bodies, eyes pregnant with desires, incandescent spaces between the skin & white shirts stiffed with starch, heads turned toward the sea, a rose between your teeth, doors undone, amor, the judgement day is not here, let’s die on the petals of the wind.
featured painting: In the mood for love – MM Ciciovan
That night, the child – flowery eyes wide open, sweet skin like candy – stole the moon. He squeezed it in his palm and a thousand St. John’s Lanterns fell on the earth. He giggled. A lily of light bloomed on his shoulder. He touched it with his fingers, purred like a cat, and hid in its shadow.
*
Hushing sea. Latent waves on my body; tears on the cheek of the child. Our first night in Alicante. It was St. John’s Night. Fate was playing dice. Buried in the sand between our naked souls, between our fermenting lips, breasts of broken statues and Miguel Hernández’s Cancionero Y Romancero De Ausencias. We were two ghosts finding each other from afar. He wrote that, didn’t he?
*
The sky opens. The child continues to sleep, the moon tightly squeezed between his little fingers. In the bathtub my hyacinths, and the aroma of sandalwood invert their positions. I took too many sleeping pills. I fell into the exaltation of my own double. Grabbed by the claws of a bird the loneliness spams. A conch shell releases your voice. Stars and sea salt. My last I love you.
Announcement
Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year. Excerpt from its mission:
We publish most poetry genres: epic, lyric, narrative, or prose poetry. We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.
2022, Somewhere in Southern Europe, photo Gabriela Marie Milton
September Love – poetic
September again, my steps heavier, my hips moving with the same uncertainty they did during the time when the child was conceived. Barefoot I trampled grapes in a red vat, my dress rolled above the knees, my hair in a bun. The crisp smell of broken Gamay Noir penetrates my nostrils. The first release of the fall juices. Echoes muffled by the cracking of corn roasting on the fire.
I hurt. I miss you desperately. Perhaps you’ve never returned from that September when we first met. Sighing leaves, sobbing skies, cold hands looking to ignite fires. A tango coming from nowhere coiling like a snake around our bodies. Sweet forehead kisses. On my neck, somnolent bruises covered by makeup.
I cannot stand anymore Victorian self-righteousness, fake politeness – “I apologize for interrupting, I came to slit your throat” – people who speak about gratitude without practicing it, questionable advisers who have proliferated like false parasol mushrooms after the rain. They make me sick. The tragicomedy of this world. Poetica, Aristotle. Remember?
Here we go again: young, books under our arms, love burning our eyes until we could see beyond the limits of September, philosophy burning our souls, trademarks of Friday afternoons on our skin. Roman columns reaching the sky at the exact hour when we interlinked our consciousnesses. Pears ripening in trees, branches burying themselves in the earth. Spread at the base of the columns our heated bodies ready to fly. We were not supposed to ever come back.
Why did we, my love?
I steal words from September’s iconostasis. I sew them in a field of dahlias. I wash my hands and my feet. You take the corn from the fire. The child plays. Blue and white awnings murmur in the wind. The child. The sunrise of the first I love you.
Image: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – Liebespaar (Die Hembusse), public domain
Summer Love By Gabriela Marie Milton – from Woman: Splendor and Sorrow:I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
That summer love burned us until our skin became tranquilized. We were ready to receive. None of us cared about the danger of the thousand apples from which we bit. Poetry? Oh, poetry was too good to be read. We tasted it and ate it with silver spoons. All filtrations of the mind and senses hid in small apple bites and scented flowers. By dusk, we exhausted everything with our breath. The children’s voices vanished into the dark. The doubt of too much spilled between us like ashes from a broken urn. Summer love.
Updates
Please do not forget our Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong WomenParty, June 18, 3pm London time. I emailed the Zoom link to all authors. The event will be live-streamed via YouTube. See you at the party.
I was interviewed by Victoria Onofrei of Radio Bloomsbury. I spoke about my poetry, our upcoming anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women, and many other things. The interview will be broadcasted Sunday, June 19, 6pm London time. I will share the link on my blog and Twitter account on June 19.
If you submitted poetry for MasticadoresUsa and did not receive a reply from me please resubmit.
If only I could put my palm into yours for one single sunset when the autumn smells like corn & the eyelids of the sea cast spells on the cheeks of the stars At the end of the shore milk foam washes the feet of the children
I suspect I am subject to hallucinations. I see a woman wrapped in a Cashmere checkered shawl talking to a dead person. The metaphors she uses are stolen, and her heavy makeup reminds me vaguely of a harlequin. Perhaps the shawl projected its sick personality into her, or perhaps she regressed to an infantile state under my very eyes.
She looks like a lacerated doll attached to one of Cuixar’s canvases.
Did you talk? Are you here?
My love, yesterday I read your poems. Your spellbound words reclaimed my very existence. Letters fell into my cupped palms. From the mirror the contour of your body – textured like ripened mangoes under a third eclipse of the moon – entered my world. Your words adapted to my lips. They absorbed the piano’s euphoria with its marvelous rhythmicity. Our happiness became imperative like the birth of a child at 39 weeks.
Today I am back – albeit sedated – inside the ambivalence of my own introspections swinging from one site to another like the Kirby Cove swing above the Pacific Ocean.
I do not see the woman anymore, but I can still see the dead person. The throbbing pain of Cuixar’s paintings and your absence become unbearable.
When I do not cry myself to death, I pretend you are here.
@Gabriela Marie Milton
MasticadoresUSA Update
A new beautiful poem is now up at MasticadoresUSA.
my love my tears wed the earth the night is naked, and it’s drunk it dances around roses with lips which taste old wine he who wins the night wins me the many games of life birds whose flight has stopped sedated the night’s a carousel which turns inside my heart
and…
my deepest thanks to Cassa – a wonderful poetess – who wrote beautiful words about my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings. Here is a snippet from Cassa’s post:
“Reading your poetry is an inquisitive journey
Its richness and mystery evoke my intrinsic curiosity
Once I open the wondrous door to your art
I am completely absorbed in the marvel of your words”
Please read Cassa’s entire post here and visit her site here.
My poem The Last Love published by Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine:
I eat macaroons in the same coffee shop Roberto’s guitar sells cheap dreams by the sea young girls are ready for harvest like flowers of lust I laugh… I scratch poetry on a glass I say the first love is French you ask how’s the last it smells raspberries, vanilla, and grass
you touch…
continue reading with WP here.
or continue reading at Vita Brevis Press here.
My book, Passions: Love poems and Other Writings, can be ordered on Amazon here.
On a different note, I apologize to all my followers for not reading your posts over the past two days. I promise I will do my best to catch up with everyone’s posts as soon as I can.
Work and painful experiences got in the way. As a professor the end of the academic year has always been a humbling and joyous experience. Generally, it takes 2 years to get a Masters’ degree. After that it takes anywhere between 4-6 years (even longer in some cases) to earn a doctoral degree.
During graduation shaking the hands of my students, looking them in the eyes, and telling them: Congratulations Dr… it was a privilege to have you as my student. It meant the world to me. I did my best to equip you with knowledge and to teach you how to think critically. I encouraged you all along to challenge my thinking. Now, you are ready. Go out in the world and create new knowledge: knowledge that we all can benefit from. Now, that you are at the same level with me I hope you will do better than I do. With all my heart I wish you good luck and may your star be the brightest. Each and every one of your victories will speak to me. Each and every one of your victories will prove that you are great and that not even a minute from my countless hours of work during long afternoons and sleepless nights was wasted. Congratulation Dr…Go for it!
This year none of this will happen in person. My regalia will not leave the closet. It will be a painful experience for me and for my students.
let’s take the train and go to Vienna rent a room for a night and then waltz in your arms the waist of the night trembles fingertips touch a blue door which is locked I sit barefoot on the floor the windows’ eyelashes are yellow and drunk your voice moves stones in a lonely graveyard to bury the tears I cry and lonely like children of war we cut…
please continue reading here.
Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here
Tomorrow in the U.S. most people will celebrate Easter. From the bottom of my heart to those of you who are Western Orthodox, “Happy Easter! Christ is risen!” To those of you who are Eastern Orthodox, “Happy Palm Sunday!” To those of you who are not Christians may you have a thousand years of happiness. May we all live in peace. Do not listen to false prophets. Do know listen to those who in sweet voices lecture you and claim they know better. Let your heart be filled with love. Read, write, paint, dance, sing, work the land, do what you have to do but remember to think for yourself. Only then we all will be fine.
