Behlor Santi- Two Poems

APOLOGY: A SEMI-GHAZAL

 

It’s not winter anymore, boy,

summer sweats out the truth.

 

Summer is not a pop song, no,

heat is the cold unvarnished truth.

 

I don’t eat key lime pie because of you.

Matthew, I am telling the truth.

 

Don’t fall in lust on psych wards.

Like black and white, this is oedipal truth.

 

I feel so Zionist right now. The

Holy Land, the Bible. Telling the truth?

 

Miss Behlor Bernice, enjoy the heat.

Apologize without desire. You know

the truth.

SONG OF SONGS

 

For E.

 

My left knee aches, stiffens, numbs up

in the grip of summer storms.

 

I remember the Charles River,

you shirtless, unbuttoning me --

the devil you’ll always be.

 

At a New York City kiosk, I

glance at a trashy celebrity mag.

Watch the editors gloat

over 135 gluttonous pounds.

I smile.

 

I write by the East River.

I’m housed by a place

that’ll never be a home.

I kiss fantasy lips,

 

soaking in your multitudes

of virtues and vices,

vices and virtues.

 

Like Whitman and Hughes,

my soul is deep, like rivers.

I sing.

Behlor Santi has recently published fiction and poetry at Eunoia Review and The Birds We Piled Loosely. She curently lives on an island between Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens. Contact her at nycwriter1980@mail.com.