[ ] of desire
Bella Jacobs
How can sappho not
suffocate
Between [ ] silences we revere like sonnets
Sentimental:
Indebt ourselves to
Archaeology we forgot about
Anachronistic negations–
i never did learn latin,
To be fluent in a dead language
i learn Sappho not silence
and try to be
Satisfied:
From the latin
satis //enough// + facere //make//
We make our own [enough]
To satiate mortality and memory
But what did she (i) mean for us (her) to salvage
In cracks in creases of eroding effigies
Us sapphic english majors pray to like évangiles
Drawn to that bit of accidental secrecy:
–Reduction is seduction–
Aphrodite is deathless
Give it to me good and glossy, this
Matrilineal malady of
Why am i not satisfied?
Filling space with [ restless ]
Rapacious
Enough to make any reader anxious
But don't worry, i’ll leave out the lived part of
nothing happened
Of walking home dressed up in
Expectations i couldn't help but
Wear against my bare skin,
Over imagined fragments:
Sonic syllables,
Soliloquies written
Like effigies to ephemerality–
i want kisses like flowers and fumes:
burning gardenias at dusk
The paper cut of eyes locked pages turning
Whisper it down my neck
Hold my hair like earth
And promise with no words
That you’ll write about this
In the fragments you remember in the morning
suffocate
Between [ ] silences we revere like sonnets
Sentimental:
Indebt ourselves to
Archaeology we forgot about
Anachronistic negations–
i never did learn latin,
To be fluent in a dead language
i learn Sappho not silence
and try to be
Satisfied:
From the latin
satis //enough// + facere //make//
We make our own [enough]
To satiate mortality and memory
But what did she (i) mean for us (her) to salvage
In cracks in creases of eroding effigies
Us sapphic english majors pray to like évangiles
Drawn to that bit of accidental secrecy:
–Reduction is seduction–
Aphrodite is deathless
Give it to me good and glossy, this
Matrilineal malady of
Why am i not satisfied?
Filling space with [ restless ]
Rapacious
Enough to make any reader anxious
But don't worry, i’ll leave out the lived part of
nothing happened
Of walking home dressed up in
Expectations i couldn't help but
Wear against my bare skin,
Over imagined fragments:
Sonic syllables,
Soliloquies written
Like effigies to ephemerality–
i want kisses like flowers and fumes:
burning gardenias at dusk
The paper cut of eyes locked pages turning
Whisper it down my neck
Hold my hair like earth
And promise with no words
That you’ll write about this
In the fragments you remember in the morning
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Bella Jacobs (PZ '24) is a creative writing and anthropology major from North Carolina. She loves discovering people's idiosyncrasies and wants to trust unreliable narrators.
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