2 Poems  

By Christine Hamm  

Amorous Morsels


Come in my mouth,
He said
(my heart like a starling beating against a window) 
His face beneath me
I became liquid
gave birth to a new universe
hot milk poured from me
I saw a river behind eyes rolled back in my head
A kiss so deep I slaver
my skin loosens and peels back
like the skin
of a well-cooked pheasant.
I am boiled 
I am a boiled bird,
boiled meat, flesh 
loosening and floating away in the bubbling water
the boiling water
of your palms on my hips
the boiling heat of your mouth drinking me
deeply, drinking
and me, floating away.



Spring (again) and as usual it hurts... Flowers like the mouths of dangerous children. The wind is cold and too tired of itself to be bitter. The stench of drowning earthworms fills wet streets. Hands and feet and foreheads are white and stupid with cold and wet and mud. Inside the hospital a white dwarf (the dying woman) stretches up from her pillow to whisper stories about making and selling paper flowers "when I was a goil." Tiny Indian girls flow out of the thunderbird. Lime and teal satinslashpolyester frocks foaming at the sleeves and hems with plastic lace. They are made up like movie stars, Egyptian eyed. Into the one-hour photo studio with the cracked pane, they flower sidestepping the cloud reflecting puddles not even giggling, holding their breaths, lifting shiny shoes like dainty deer hooves, their ankle socks flashing like the breath of stars.


Christine Hamm has recently had poetry published in Shampoo Poetry, can we have our ball back, Poetry Midwest,and Stirring. Her work has been selected to be in Tricia Warden's DigitalHammer.com. She is the literary editor of the new magazine, Wide Angle, and will be teaching a poetry writing workshop through the Women's Studio Center this fall. She has an MFA in creative writing.

Contact Christine Hamm at: bronzelizard@cs.com



August 30, 2002
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