wicked alice| fall 2009


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Dolly Lemke


Woman descending stairs as if a portrait is made upon arrival.

 

 

I don’t think that I like John. Imaging people having all kinds of sex.  Imagine watery skin behind

synthesis.  John is a materialist.  What could be better.  Gingham button-down blouse is cotton.  Big

woman, blousy, puckered, perpendicular.  I know she don’t work on the farm.  She could fit inside that

box if she tried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A woman is a container in which you hold.

 

 

Can grow bodies.  Can extract iron from blood.  Can say “I want the twilight anesthetic.”  Cannot speak

about this again.  Can still grow bodies.  Can use cotton to absorb the blood.  Can insert desirable objects. 

Can grow carcinogens.  Can present dysplastic cells.  Can inspect her flower every day.  Can carry her own

luggage.  Cannot stitch her own lesions.  Can make signage with her eyes.  Can make dead in a single stride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cinching 

 

 

Push the tea kettle off, I hate you so much.  Walk along the thread, stinking red.   This is the last time I

wait for distress. 

 

This flu has people jamming up the lanes, I know.  But now, Janey has to drive herself.  Deluge right into

the contaminant.  Her night vision is taut, she has a slack-jaw memory.  The slightest bump makes

unconscious

 

Go post-it note your own mirror.  Finish up your shift.  Let other people drive the cars.  FYI, you may not

succeed. They will take away the movies.  No one will speak Portuguese.  This is the last time I wait.   A

phone call is the least amount of effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cut this safely and procure all the fragments.

 

 

Let everything grow deeply so we can stamp out the pretty things.  We could sweep together.  We could

control these awful little shallots.  When the pantry is stocked.  When the draft stays in the attic.  We will

be in this place.  We will own the wrinkles and push cuticles back for the sake of grooming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

how she knots it

 

I keep my pennies alive.  Keep buttons and pins and other people’s business cards.  Go home at night and

look at all my things.

 

 

put his heel on the rat’s head and killed it

 

Rat is not quiet and seems coy.  I slept with a rat, slow poisoned a rat, called for help.  It was large and

dead.  I killed the rat.

 

 

the whole story of the home affairs

 

Abstinence and fainting.  Figuring out what incognito really means.  The park has a road that is a road,

pavement and social but not to be tread upon.

 

 

she used to be hoary

 

The opposite of white this time.

 

 

however those unhappy flowers are spelt

 

I will make room for the ranunculus, there are many parts of the ringlets and facets.  Simple for the lichen

to mock the angel.  You could chart everything by the organization of this tree.

 

 


Dolly Lemke is currently pursuing a MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago where she teaches Composition and works as a Student Advocate.  She is also the Publicity Coordinator at Switchback Books, a small feminist press based in Chicago.