FLIRTING (poem)

Here is a poem that has several layers of meaning, as poems by Ana Elsner often do. It requires repeated reading to penetrate to the deeper message.

FLIRTING


Stony Sweetheart,
grazer on meadows of skin,
WHO chimed you into Sunday,
the one day when there is no bloodshed?

Flirtatious Dominatrix,
subject of our fascination,
now un-sleeping,
now raised up
from the darkest soil of heaven.

Say you wish you were a Seraphim,

but slice through our sinews
with the gold-tipped blade of your song,

your de-li-ri-ous-ly hypnotic siren-song,

that cripples our feeble attempts
at gasping for life.


Sunday.
No bloodshed.


And you are inscrutably a wanton Seductress,
approaching from far away,

yet never far enough away
to save us from the predictable outcome
of our dangerous contrivances,
and let us go

un-claimed.


Yours is immortally a love that is, needs be,
all-consuming,
all-exhaustive,
de-lic-ious-ly fatal to our bereft existence.

Yet all our new days
we will be,

we dream of your touch,

secretly,
craven.


All now flirtation.


All.

Now.




© Ana Elsner
[reprinted by permission]

FLIRTING is published in CAVEAT LECTOR, a magazine dedicated to literature, social and cultural criticism, philosophy, and the arts

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