After Spider Dance
La Tarantella is a southern Italian ecstatic folk dance, traditionally performed by lower class women, midwives, eccentrics and others at the margins. Groups of couples now perform it at weddings.
I started seeing scratches under women’s eyes
Some of the women
tired from too much seeing
scratches & their absence of inner thigh
Spider curled in a white rose
Animal souls cut flowers a raindrop
a buzzing Why don’t you
just break my neck already?
Tiger lily How many calories?
Maybe twenty
gilding the lily Brushing my hair is
a mutilation Well, of course you engender
sexual obsession in others,
your many lovers That’s why you
could never cohabitate, you’d run out
of little outfits –
Mosquitos finally come a callin’ this summer
Baby bok choy bolting
up the center Fuck those white sheets police helicopter
star of the sea
You can get into a rhythm
Eyes on everything
Season of lightness
Taking your dreams away
After Spider Dance, II
Are you
a weaver like me?
Maybe you could heal me Feed me nuts & berries
lichen tincture
essential medicine
so my bones grow
I can tie
my bones together I know how
to mate fully without bearing children
copious and empty
Smile at me at la clinica
I’m drunk enough now
to tell you about Rochelle
my across-the-street 2nd grade neighbor
whose mother was always away
Rochelle taught me how to masturbate
in the basement by straddling inflatable pool toys
Her mother’s face in the gold hand mirror
in the dark peach bedroom
looking away
This is the thing
about not ever needing anyone
all your secrets are your own
Watch them
bead up like dew
Corinne A. Schneider is a working poet from the Great Lakes / Rust Belt of the US. She writes poems, essays and other ephemera from the House of Sex, Death & Taxes. Her work has recently appeared in Bone Bouquet, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Coldfront Mag, and So to Speak. She lives in Washington, DC with her cats and partner and writes about international solar energy markets for a living.
aglimpseof.net 