Poem of the Week: Lisa Marie Basile

LOURDES

Matthew is plain on the tongue and fleeting.

Lourdes sits, instead of sex, on two blue crates,
feeds herself blue lemons. Lips sodden,

she bathes. She tastes the burn
in the lantern of her chest.

Lourdes snakes straight through the garden into her own bed

opens her dignities and pleasures
like guava

white cotton underwear
___to the side
open with pulque

wet of cachaca
without the sugarcane,

& boys with biblical names
make no appearance,

especially Matthew,

a worn worm soldier jamming its way
into the core of a ripe melon.

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Lisa Marie Basile comes from the bloodline of Giambattista Basile, the fairy-tale writer. She is a graduate of The New School’s MFA program. She is the author of  (Brothel Books) and  (Dancing Girl Press). Her chapbook, war/lock, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. She is the founding editor of Patasola Press, an assistant editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and a managing member of the Poetry Society of New York.  She contributes to a few secret projects and wears Joseph Quintela’s #bookdress.