Sagittarius

artwork: ralph murre

Sagittarius

by Jean Feraca

I take you in (O happy dagger!)

Gorge on you, motherhoard

My plunder

There is no bottom to this well

No quelling

This huge hunger

I thought you were the sea swelling

I thought I was Aphrodite rising from your foam

Who is this monster rides you flat out, flailing

Knees, thighs

Dug in

Goading your thunder?

This must be the underworld we forge

Your colossal legs floundering

Through ungulate water, the air

Roaring, we sink

Into a stew

Thick as sulphur we are galloping through

Brays, bellows, a hullabaloo

Erupts

From the inside -- It's bedlam

I'm queen of, rampant

Bared

I snort, shudder

Boil up like a brew, a screamer

Pluming over.  Arched

Taut

Ready to leap

Out of time

To be

Released, the flint that flies

One-eyed

Into dawn.

~ first published in Crossing the Great Divide

  (Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters)

Of Bread

artwork: ralph murre

Of Bread

by Jean Feraca

It doesn’t matter that the house isn’t locked.

Without you, it’s empty as an oven

of its loaves

I want neither your ham nor your cheese

nor your oysters and white

wine

I want the yeast of you, making me rise

til I split, two halves

in your teeth

and the butter melting, the hot bran

your yam-yellow light spilling

your honey seeping all through the comb

Not this house with its darkening oak.

Not that table laid with its cold

plates.

~ previously published in Wisconsin Poetry, Transactions