Julia Istomina
High Tide In Female
Mardi Gras, salubrious, explodes a porcelain statue
With its lust-colored provocation of beads –
Hung on tapered legs I bustle like a leopard in the midst
Of awakening evanescence, each riddle countering
Illogical action – the left wing psychosis step.Freud says we are political beings in quarrel with
Ourselves. I have been in quarrel with myself since
The day I bled. They asked how I did it and I will
Laugh, jittery, elated, befriending a massive lump
From some-a-where’s, probably my femaleness. The
Deep, dark country harkens its bleakness like a midnight
Impasse, troubling seafarers who are made to guide
Their reeling phallic ships toward safe port, harboringThose sentiments of Moby Dick’s exigent voyage,
The lady waters, shark pools moistening splintered wood
Till I can’t take it anymore. Distilled whale blubber dabbles the Queen’s
Infinitely wrinkled neck, swelling obtusely in turn through cocky
Interior bobbles of needle sweat and claustrophobia – “ This is not
My smell au natural”. Jaunting isn’t the fragrant moon, flora,
Mixed with fauna, Texan carcasses fluttering from a Mexican
Interruption of lime ice and tortoise eggs in clotted sand -Almost flagrantly attractive, like an unbecoming nubile
Summer solstice – nearby the Cheshire pines and blitzed oak
Heave scent through the trap door like a woman’s female lips
Emanating devotion to the eager knitting male. Soft as gray felines,
We pull ourselves from the ocean like a primitive accessory –
Turquoise bead – chipped river shell – canary breast dabbled feather
On copious rounds of twine – useless ornaments,
[We’ll wade upon wade to feed any chance of heavenly communion].
PsychoanalystHad said these maternal masses of hysteria are unpredictably dark,
Coated with the smelt of pine honey that clings to your Oedipal figurine,
A deep-sea diver coming up with a fin and seaweed strewn across his neck,
Staying an unwanted party guest long after – never has it been more difficult
To refute a relation to our personal mother. She is the ocean rollicking, soon
Shrieking an undivided, high octave for this or that and for herself to
Not talk about it. We wade in the ocean, the ocean wades in us. Retaining
A sort of beach every moon strike becomes undulated duty, phantomMistress walking in our limbs late at night as the dispersed temptresses
Sing to our lower timbers – only relating as woman because woman is what
They tell me I am – not knowing myself I knowing me as woman – the mistress
Guiding you to the ethereal sound bite – brazen clash of imprudent young stars, anxious
To donate their last breath to the water as it foments its swaying, curves
swelling, insides Aching with expansion, hands and arms becoming one with ports
And sailors’ wanton eyes, stars dying again, again and over;This farcical drama tolerates you wishing upon them,
Like a fatalist Robert Browning fawning over the mistress
He only understood through words.
Bio:
Julia Andreevna Istomina was born in Moscow, Russia in 1983 and moved to the US in 1992. She explores a variety of themes including her fragmented cultural experience within her poetry, which has appeared in Pudding Magazine, Los contemporary poesy & art, Poetry Magazine and an upcoming issue of Salt International Journal of Poesy and Poetics.
