The House Without the Ivy

Seashells and mutiny
this house is still all
windows and sliding doors.
Pockmarked clapboard,
the widowers reminder.

It echoes of secret children,
olive skin wives.
Illumination
and guilt.

The ammunition of virgins
preyed upon and prayed for,
beauty on the rim of a wine glass
concave and reluctant.

Greedy hands tug at the strings
of a viola, which
sat quiet for so long
it forgot the
sound of its
own song.

8 Point Buck

It’s been a warm
autumn
so shed your
summer coat and be
naked in your velvets.

Feverish stag idolatry
it’s season here in pale yellows
and blue bells
your rack is worse than
your bite, baby.

You make monsters
out of women.

We

parted lips
parted legs
parted ways.

Slap in the face from God,
the rain my only witness.

You float between dreams and here,
noon in Brooklyn Heights
every one’s day has started
but your own.

I prayed the entire bus ride home.

I prayed for our forgiveness.

My piety is purged
through conformity.

Today is the flagellation of the boy king.

Holy parables cannot hold
but a flicker to you.

Coming of Christ

Look at my hands,

stretched on a dirty floor
knuckles white
elbows at right angles.

Lean forward,
mouth open
my hair bathes your feet in
forgiveness.

You like me because
we fuck without promise.

Mouthful of warm risk
it rests upon my lip
a decade of reasons
to never leave.

You were once a child
etched from sun bleached stone,
vision of the past.

Funny how everything
changes.

This is my second redemption.

Penance on face and chest
it sears flesh,
no one notices.

Welcome to the lie.

Things I miss most

The honestly of concrete,
courageous leaps of letting go,
our lady of the cuckoo
clock.

A kiss nineteen years
in the making, unspoiled snow, the
chalkiness of musk scented skin,
a hallway bereft.
Overt silence,
pail as crib and coffin,

the downy of your thighs
nestled between
each of my particles.

Shayne Benz is a New York native currently getting my MFA in poetry at City College, She lives in Manhattan with her two cats.