Ciara Shuttleworth
Fuck Broken Dishes
once you’ve seen what wine glasses
can do to a face,
what you can do with silk and lace
to suffocate the one you love
so much you want them glove
close, always in sight,
like you don’t breathe right
when they are near or when they
are as far as the memory of Sunday
mass. Fuck cold-
cock punches, I’m the one holding
the throwing fist, no restraint,
the heat
my vision red
until he can hold me anchored
and we play makeup sex,
pretend the effects
of me plus him in such potency
will calm. Nobody
will tell him to stay, not me.
I want to beat him until he bleeds,
bleed until I feel life
flow into me, the penultimate fight:
beat rather than be
beaten. But he never raises a fist to me.
Never raises his voice or closes
doors between us. The mirror exposes
something shattered, waiting, silent.
The longer I look, the more I find
the next thing I break will be
me.
Ciara Shuttleworth’s poem publications include THRUSH. Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review and others. More info on me can be found at www.ciarashuttleworth.com.
Return to July 2015 Edition
once you’ve seen what wine glasses
can do to a face,
what you can do with silk and lace
to suffocate the one you love
so much you want them glove
close, always in sight,
like you don’t breathe right
when they are near or when they
are as far as the memory of Sunday
mass. Fuck cold-
cock punches, I’m the one holding
the throwing fist, no restraint,
the heat
my vision red
until he can hold me anchored
and we play makeup sex,
pretend the effects
of me plus him in such potency
will calm. Nobody
will tell him to stay, not me.
I want to beat him until he bleeds,
bleed until I feel life
flow into me, the penultimate fight:
beat rather than be
beaten. But he never raises a fist to me.
Never raises his voice or closes
doors between us. The mirror exposes
something shattered, waiting, silent.
The longer I look, the more I find
the next thing I break will be
me.
Ciara Shuttleworth’s poem publications include THRUSH. Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review and others. More info on me can be found at www.ciarashuttleworth.com.
Return to July 2015 Edition