Two Poems by Kate Bucca

Cleave

The man I chose for an affair
rose only
to my forehead.           His cock

barely registered in my mouth.

So when my husband
threw me down           and forced his way inside

I answered him honestly—

yes, you are bigger—

before he struck my face.

 

~

 

Flashbacks ease with treatment
or so they say.             Instead I recreate,
drink away—

hyper-vigilant & numbed until

I wake on my back

dental-record bruises
stamping my neck, collarbone,
upper chest

where my ribs show.

You begged me to bite you—
the pain craves remembering,

and litters my body—

Improvident Marriage

In Slănic Muşcel we shimmied
off the brains, pan-fried and eaten—

my jaw moved
open-shut so many times

I lost count.

Onlookers:      See them!
She makes him
dance!

Paraphrase:
grow his seed
inside my belly.

An open roof, swipes
of air reaching
us. When I wanted spinning

I twirled away
from him,        leading.

 

During the same escape
he fed me        ciorbă de burtă—
spoons full of stomach.

He walked me alongside cows
with heavy feet,
no step inside

a village without a man
to hold hand and translation.

 

At the airport
I pled with the agents
—nu vorbesc româneste—

as they pointed at a Plexiglas box
replete
with confiscated weapons.

Kate Bucca is an MFA candidate in fiction and poetry at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she serves as the Vermont Book Award Fellow and a reader for Hunger Mountain. Her short fiction, essays, poetry, and visual art can be found in Limestone, The Nervous Breakdown, Timber, DigBoston, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. Fomite Press published her novel, Companion Plants, in 2014. In addition to writing, Kate has worked as a bookseller, paralegal, pastry chef, and model with MSA Curve. She lives in Vermont with her husband—essayist Dominic Bucca—and their seventeen-pound cat, Snack. Find more of her work at creaturesinminiature.com.

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