Soothers & The Fifth by Donna Dallas
Soothers
Man on the moon
I await you bittersweet
come
let’s
begin with roll of your tongue
then a click click………….. what have they done to you poor thing
you say when you enter
glowing animal eye
mmmm I say
man on the moon
I’ve missed you blood red magic
melts skin into stars
into sky velvet
it feels like the softest suede I’m succumbed………..
When you exit
no one sees
they never noticed
black sky
dark as a coffin
the plucked out
pock-mark hole
you only escaped for a
tet-a-tet
now with your back to me
I wait again
The Fifth
Are you married yet, you ask. No, I say,
and you? Somewhat, you reply.
I ask you, what constitutes a marriage?
Is this your marriage
for life or just speculative love? No reply.
Children? Have you ever heard of the
ten commandments, I inquire. Do you
always plead the fifth? Dinner and dancing
consistently—does she suspect? I suppose
you will say you love me and now that
you have induced me to love you, what can
I reply? Seasons pass and nights churn the
saucy lives of two—or is it three? My parents
love you. You are a cozy fixture in my parlor
of thoughts. I believe you love me, her, us,
this triad—triangle, the damnation of immorality
and yet it is the sweetest of all sugar that
I am to you. And we go on—have gone on,
suspected, even seen. Who cares anymore,
let them gossip deeper than a laundry basket
because we are, unfortunately, the dirty
laundry of society. No man is an island
and no woman is every woman. We are all
searching for something other than what we have
at home in the flannel sheets of a country
bedroom I know nothing about but somehow
imagine replacing a soft wife that holds you
to her still. And maybe I am soft too, but
soft second and oh sometimes it really doesn’t
matter the order when you are in my arms,
my bed and when they ask—which they always
do, I take my heart in my hand and plead the fifth.
“I write tabu, I love dark and strange subject matter. I truly enjoy this niche. Some poems get tucked away for a while for fear they are too out there. Sometimes, I pull them back out and rear their ugly heads.”
Donna Dallas has appeared in a plethora of journals, most recently The Opiate, Beatnik Cowboy, Tribes, Horror Sleaze Trash and Fevers of the Mind. She is the author of Death Sisters, her first novel published by Alien Buddha Press. Her chapbook, Smoke and Mirrors, launched in 2022 with New York Quarterly. Donna serves on the editorial team of NYQ. donnaanndallas@gmail.com @DonnaDallas15