By Robin Reagler
Lesbian Desire
My old mouth, my new mouth
They both want to meet her
And although she might expel
Words filled with philosophy
There would be otherables
Of this I am quite sure
I am talking about an economy
Of erotic communication I am
Talking about an unforgivable
Attraction, the double helix
Made up of women entwined
And worshipping one another
With bodies more naked each night
I am talking more than I should
The landscape is thrumming my feelings
Sex is vibrational, I am music
Somebody has spilled sugar on
The sidewalk where a new day
Begins by lunching on sunrise
And I (he/she/they) dictate
A love letter to a woman
A beautiful woman who reads
Constantly who longs for love secretly
Who pretends not to know this much
Night Is This Anyway
The beautiful human machine that
I admire diagonally has grown these
wings under limited starlight, reeking
of tenderness, resting in a bed of leaves.
Feelings leak out into the dark.
Walking over the tiniest of hills
I have no option except to listen,
listen and translate eucalyptus in its
innocence, bent over, grey-green,
incapable of sincere communication
although no one values sincerity
any more because that could unravel
the moon. High-pitched sounds
contain true, random messages;
this one connects the concepts
of bones and loneliness, the 3 a.m.
search for the unlit hallway leading
to the place we sleep. And as we sleep
our limbs tendril around one another,
passion is a vine, climbing. It’s in this
way that people begin to fly.
The Family of Begin Again
Anger begins in the mind and if ignored, floods the body.
I try to believe the mind is one with the body. That’s hard for me.
My mind can’t stop talking, obsessing over the body.
My mind keeps talking to itself about my mother.
It talks about her in her voice, her intonations, and her diction.
It binds the remembered with the feared.
It has the power to make things happen, but instead it makes things
stop happening. It could blind you.
And yet to you, I say yes. I say yes,
whether bridge or ford,
whether seam or hem.
Or yes, as rainwater floods the bayou’s concrete walls and seeps into the city.
Yes, and still yes, as the characters in this story handle each other for the first time.
And yes, as the run-up contains both threads of moonlight and anger.
There is a strand of anger wire-live and tying down my tongue.
There is a strand of anger that can only be quelled by dreams.
Who can explain the small stone in my mouth?
Who dreamed the stone, my mother or me?
I meant to say characters. In that story.
Because these are the clothes we hide in.
We ache for invisibility, for the escape from our own bodies.
And yet. You.
And yet. Me.
Just alive, just bravely alive and vibrating
With words spilling out that hold us in this grid
and never sleep and never cry.
About the Author:
Robin Reagler is the author of TEETH & TEETH (Headmistress Press, 2018), winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize selected by Natalie Diaz, and DEAR RED AIRPLANE (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011, 2018). She is the Executive Director of Writers in the Schools (WITS) in Houston. She recently served as Chair of the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Board of Trustees.
About All Accounts:
All Accounts and Mixture is an annual online feature celebrating the work of LGBTQIA+ writers and artists. For this series, we seek work from authors who self-identify as "queer," while acknowledging that this designation is subjective and highly personal. Our goal is to provide a forum for writers whose voices might be mis- or underrepresented by the literary mainstream. Submissions are open from June 1 to July 1. Poetry, prose, visual art, reviews and interviews will all be considered. Visit Submittable for more details.