Sweet Talk - poems

I put together this little zine of poetry around Christmas 2012. Since it's unlikely that I'll actually keep up with reprinting it, or that there will be a need to do so, I decided to post it here on my new writing blog. I did make a few changes (most notably with Quiver, which was originally called Moon Stone and had two additional extraneous and embarrassing stanzas).

Follow the jump break to read Sweet Talk:

Chew Toy

Chew toy

Hideous and deformed

Roughed up frayed rubber

Penetrating mongrel black lips

Chew toy

Slick with spittle

Scraping bruised

Knuckled gums

Chew toy

Gnawed off

Bulbous shaft

It chokes it down

Chew toy

Wagging happy

Squeaky squeak

Suck mouth dog dildo

Autumn’s daylight begins to dwindle

Dust motes circling in lazy passage

In dog years we slumber together

Then we get electric for Xmas

Breasts bursting through velour

Cum matted crushed velvet Elvis

Wine glasses stained like lipstick

Butternut squash encrusted

Cooking pans soaking in the sink

After New Years however

There are visits to the clinic

Dog bowl left full and bloody stool

Cold scrubbed steel table

The smell of disinfectant and piss

Then come warm hands in powdered gloves

The vet’s discerning fingers press

Lightly along its spotted belly

Detecting any rupture or anomaly

At home there’s the empty dog bed

And a worn cardboard box

Filled with chew toys

We forget to check the mail

Because there’s sure to be a bill

And instead drink more wine

Chew Toy

Tender four-legged

Laughing barks at sirens

And at passing thunder

We tell our friends with pets

To take the dog bed and cardboard box

Then we rearrange the furniture

Later in the warmer months

We discover a leash hanging

In the back of a hall closet

Then we push back the winter coats

Redistributing them evenly across the rod

And firmly press shut the closet door

Kennel Cough 

There’s a caged animal

That paces ceaselessly

Its inky form blotted, bottomless

With features that recede into

The slinky velvet of its coat

It keeps to the back of its cell

Concealed in shadow

Its exact contours smudged, indistinct

The eyes stand out though

Ever watchful, glinting

Through the sable pall

Like slits cut in some

Woolen fabric

It monitors our progress with agitation

From the confines of its enclosure

And we take photographs with our phones

A community suffused with cotton brains

Smoke Stack

Smokestack threaded

Between the clouds

Spending exhaust

In a fanned sulfurous plume

Jutting sooty barrel

Acrid appendage

Balanced erect

A machine to dismantle the sky

Cheeks flushed

And spread

The needle sinks deeper

Into the used grooves

Of soft vinyl

Skin Suit

We were in the elder woods

Behind the hillside high school

When we found a skin suit with

A zippered removable lining

There was an empty fire pit

Where the burnouts burned

And their girlfriends stomped

Empty beer cans into the mud

Shattered glass in a concrete reservoir

Initials etched into the moldy torso of a log

Under a flat stone someone had hid several

Torn out pages from a porno magazine

The skin suit was half-hanging in a brier scrub

Prickles hooked in, its legs tangled and dangling

And we almost tore it in two on the thorns

In our nervous excitement to try it on

My brother was the first to slip into it

He had a lanky, disproportionate frame

And the suit, which was clearly made from

A woman of many curves, fell in a funny way

I could feel his gaze as he studied us, and

Something about the way he carried himself

Began to shift, as she adapted to the restrictions

That this new membrane presented her

She rolled her shoulders in an undulating trance

Sidestepping around our little group with a slinky

Careful deliberation that herded us together

Until out backs were pressed and fingers clasped

We became a wheel

Rotating in counter spin

To the satellite orbit

Of her soporific sway

Black and violet shafts of light

Transmuted temporal bodies

A unity of spokes on an oiled axis

Beneath her developing penumbra

Quiver

Every circle has a center

An eye of evil there

Spread your lips

And from your quim

Earthworm casts appear

Trumpet Bell

The trumpet bell of its hood

Tender digit recessed

Within folds of tissue

Coaxed, tentative and slick

Edible freshwater mussel

Pearling cavity and flared cleft

A sluiced wonton conch

Pouting and engorged

The Spume of unfurling surf

Worked into a lather, coating

An encroaching porous cone

Morel tipped eel, lacerated gash

With juices running

From dilated glands

Teeth tear at the flesh of

A split and seeded fruit

New Beard

Before she awoke there had been the feeling

Of someone else in bed with her

Pressed against her back

A shapeless form, exuding musk

As she breathed, It breathed

When she held her breath, It did the same

She lay still, unable to tell whether

There was really someone there or not

After she awoke the sensation lingered

One moment her eyes had been closed

The next they were open wide

At once dark, then again just as dark

Outside her window traffic from the interstate

Broke in a soft wash, rinsing out the city’s basin

In the bathroom she studied her features

In the round mirror above the sink

Her face was narrow and pointed

So that if she had been a young man

She might have grown a beard to diffuse

And obscure such pronounced features

She imagined herself in this new beard

Standing in the crawling, wet shadows

Of the narrow concrete gangway

Just below her bedroom window

Her eyes casing the

Sheer yellow drapes

For any movement beyond

The ruffled way they hung

There was the flicker of

A candle on the nightstand

Its bead of dying light

Sunk low within the melting wax

And beyond that

Her own elongated form

Bare and contorted across

The smooth floral bedspread

She studied her own splayed frame

Draped over the quilted comforter

Fingering herself, while in the gangway she

Undid her belt and forced a hand down her pants

In the bathroom she gripped the sink

With white knuckles, hair hanging in her face

Then behind her the floorboards began to creak

And she felt someone’s hands around her waist

• • • • •

Grant Reynolds identifies primarily

As a comic book artist and illustrator

But he’s recently taken to writing

To see more of his work visit

Grantreynolds.com