Poems

Dirty dirty smile

It's your mouth I dream about
the curl and arch of it
when you want to be fucked

the twisting hook of lip
the swelling tremble of smile
as it raises up slowly
         like a skirt
purposeful
         obscene.

                

God I lub you

I broke my tongue
aching into you
like a hand
searching behind a refrigerator
for a lost key
and finding a mousetrap

                

Imagining The Dancer as My Wife

I sit and watch
as they shoot
their wads of dollar bills
onto my butterfly, my little tangerine.

I watch as their pedestrian tongues
hit pothole after pothole
with every twitch and jump
of her peppercorn body.

I watch
as she wears this marriage
like a burlesque costume;
something she's twirling about her ankle,
getting ready to kick into the corner.

                

There is a voice

Stillborn
In her eyes
A sound
Underneath the quiet
Like a match
Waiting patiently
To be lit

©2005 by Jamie Zerndt

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Jamie Zerndt has had poetry appear in The Oregonian, Nerve Cowboy and Mid America Poetry Review. He works in a fancy-pants hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon and is currently refraining from adding anything witty here.