for gwendolyn brooks (14)

amrita

for gwendolyn brooks

amrita,
most treasured & revered
nectar of the goddess;
ejaculate of women
who joyfully release
the fullness of their being.

amrita
the poetry of certain women
whose thickly mucous
wordflow, whose pale, pungent &
salty poetic diction arouses &
opens wide the nose,

makes cilia-like skin hairs
rise & ripple.

amrita,
the intoxicant, the same which
made me long to write like
gwendolyn brooks, with that
same grace & ease; to turn
a phrase as deftly as she

& craft
an image so exquisitely tuned
to the boundaries of a moment,
set apart in graphic sigils, penned
with stark simplicity -- a sonnet or
a folksy narrative

to condense the sanguine
into vital vignettes.

amrita
the surprising squirt, a light
sprinkle or prodigious gush of
words brought forth by orgasmic
expulsion, that hit me in
the face & heart.

amrita,
distilled from the measured
rhythms of the english sonnet
sweetened by the ballad’s musical
strains swirled around & coated
my thrusting prosody

bringing my poetic tumescence
to ejaculatory inevitability
& past the point of no return!

© Joseph McNair; 2009