The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 1/6/2007)

[RetroLounge]

Sweat

Friday night I entered a dark corridor
rode to the upper floors with men who filled
the stainless elevator with their smell.

Did you ever make a crystal garden, pour salt
into water, keep pouring until nothing more dissolved?
A landscape will bloom in that saturation.

My daddy's body shop floats to the surface
like a submarine. Men with nibblers and tin snips
buffing skins, sanding curves under clamp lights.

I grew up curled in the window of a 300 SL
Gullwing, while men glided on their backs
through oily rainbows below me.

They torqued lugnuts, flipped fag ends
into gravel. Our torch song
ad one refrain—oh the pain of loving you.

Friday nights they'd line the shop sink, naked
to the waist, scour down with Ajax, spray water
across their necks and up into their armpits.

Babies have been conceived on sweat alone--
the buttery scent of a woman's breast,
the cumin of a man. From the briny odor

of black lunch boxes--cold cuts, pickles,
waxed paper--my girl flesh grows.
From the raunchy fume of strangers.

Sandra Alcosser

***************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[billyskank]

1. I did make a crystal garden once

But instead of table salt I used cobalt. :hi:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Good morning, my dear Retro!

I like this one!

Very sexual, and very sexy too.........

Reading it aloud only enhances it........

This part is especially good:

Babies have been conceived on sweat alone--
the buttery scent of a woman's breast,
the cumin of a man.

Thank you........:hug:

[wildhorses]

3. not for nothin'

but does she mean comin' as in to come
or cumin as in the spice/herb category?

wildhorses must know these things:P

[billyskank]

4. Maybe it is in the freedom

of wildhorses' imagination. :D

[wildhorses]

5. i think it works either way--

perhaps it is a tad more esoteric as the herb/spice though :rofl:

[cwydro]

7. Only you.

You are such a perv:evilgrin:

[leftofthedial]

6. The Raunchy Fume of Strangers

I think I found the title of my new CD

[RetroLounge]

9. Yes. Very good title...

:D

RL

[cwydro]

8. Nice poem.

I like this one. Like the fog in the poem the other day, I can smell this one too.