two Corsetinas

The Circus Girl Sucks In Her Breath

Imagines the tightrope drawn tautly around her palladium waist, a sharp masquerade shimmer
to brain stem, a liquid blush. From the doll-sized trapeze in her rib cage, a sequence
of rouged birds furl into nesting doll shapes, a red boa trapped inside ice.

Beads of crushed ice.
Beaks of shimmer.
Sheath of dream sequins.

Her wet boa constricts, tongue feathers, swooning eyelids flare sequins.
She knows a bed of nails is not so different from a bath tub brimming with ice.
Red claw footed. The haute couture bondage of her bodice an altar of worshipful shimmer.

Shimmer of spotlighted flesh belted into shape with sequins. The art form of slowly melting ice.

by Juliet Cook




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Here's What I Learned From David Copperfield About Puberty


If you are a boy being squeezed
through a roller press, your body
will undergo a drastic transformation

like the transformation
of being squeezed
through 7th grade in a body

that feels like the stiffened body
of someone who was once transformed
into a paper-thin boy when squeezed

and squeezed by a body-transforming magician.

by Matthew Walker

Send me your Corsetinas and I might publish them here (even though I must admit I'm not enough of a blogger html wizard to figure out exactly how to preserve every nuance of unusual formatting, thus certain aspects of spacing and indentation may be sacrificed. Boo hiss.).

See my guidelines below.