A Poet Reflects

fluttering-slips:

excerpts from the White poems

I.

A flirtation of language. I paint the barenness of blue. I paint your body of water, whisper language silently down skin. Hush. River water. It is the silences murmuring. The scent of a lover never tasted. Is this the same for you? Fragrant, blossoming sweat? Poet tongue? And I wouldn’t know, but these hands know. Pulsing of touch. Fragrant. White. I paint the barrenness of the body. In the empty forms I paint the poems of lovers, a yearning that overflows, overruns. Permit me two fingers to trace your shape. White blushing red. Hush. Let me write the words of red. Let me paint the taste: apple red. Peeling of skin. Permit me two fingers on skin. Permit me ink on skin. Fruit on skin. Permit me white red. Blushing. I want to write poems on white. Say forbidden. Say wanted. Say white. White. White. Hush. Write the story of two bodies untouched. Barrenness. I am refusing language. I paint two lovers drowning. Brushstroke silences. I do not wish to harm. I have not yet held you. Desire like writing. Fragrant words burning red. 

—Rebecca Knotts, from Wicked Alice Poetry Journal (Winter 2009)