Caroline Chavatel
Fakedream
“has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice
but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil
or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”
- ANTHONY BURGESS
but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil
or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”
- ANTHONY BURGESS
Circular and sweet.
Rotting.
Sweating in the wild heat.
O citrus-dreamer, your pulp
in the crevice of my palm.
The numbers rancid
in the defeat
of noon. What a waste.
Did you say your prayers?
Did you eat your produce?
I’ve seen the art
on the Internet that makes
grapefruits look like pussies,
fingers pressed into the core
forcing them to squirt
like dolls, the fruits―
what a time to be
alive and wound.
O Dali-girl, drip for us
and tell us time.
O harvest-body, stay fertile.
Shed your sin, O carpel-hide.
Report back.
Because the juice streaming
down your cheeks will nourish
someone somehow someday.
O sweet-queen, can we just play
and listen to your sweet ticking?
Caroline Chavatel is a M.F.A. candidate at New Mexico State University and serves as Asst. Poetry Editor of Puerto del Sol. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Fugue, Sonora Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Nimrod, Sugar House Review, and Epoch, among others. She was the winner of The Cossack Review's 2016 October Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the 2017 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest as well as the 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Award (phoebe). She currently lives in Las Cruces, NM where she is co-founder of Madhouse Press.
Return to January 2018 Edition