Alexandra Naughton wears many hats: She's a prolific prose writer, poet, editor, and publisher. She is the founder and editor of Be About It Press, which has published wonderful poets like Amy Saul-Zerby and June Gehringer.
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3 Poems by Alexandra Naughton — My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition
ALEXANDRA NAUGHTON
Alexandra Naughton's My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition (Bottlecap Press, 2017) includes poems from the original, highly-acclaimed collection My Posey Taste Like (Bottlecap Press, 2015) plus ten new poems. Watch this video.
maybe i don’t deserve it but i’m tired. i would like to just stop. i don’t really know what that means and i also feel the exact opposite. like i would just like to go. because maybe i don’t deserve it. so i go any where. i like feeling night time on my skin wandering but going some where it doesn’t matter why any thing can be an adventure when you let it and i let it, and it pulls me forward by invisible strings keeping the radio perfect to keep the momentum just right and i’m not even thinking any more just being part of an other body an other calling an other way to worship. and then when it feels right to stop. and then curling up to rest.
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peeing in your shower when you’re not looking and drowning in self importance. later you’re underlining how little I mean to you, tracing fingers back and forth in the carpeting for emphasis. i’m propped up on pillows and yawning like i’ve waited for this moment all weekend. our similarities can only go so far, sing so much harmony. the difference between a poem and just something you wrote is just not saying something completely fucking ordinary, it’s how you say it too.
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my posey taste like soiled tablecloths in a hamper heap. paradise lost or a parasite, lost. let the puppy lick your hand and quit being such a killjoy. touching myself in the mirror like this is the best i can do. i’m not wasting time, i’m not looking for any thing except what i can devour. straddling you on an apartment building rooftop watching the sun go down and drinking from cold glasses. i will take apart your face to find the morsels i like most, taking big bites from the sides like a dad with his kid’s ice cream cone because it’s melting. this is what love is, you say, peeling back my sweaty spousebeater to scream into my skin, my stains. every thing you do i just absorb you. staying so damn quit it makes you madder and i just take you in.
Alexandra Naughton is editor in chief of @baipress in California. Her first novel, American Mary, was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in March 2016 . She’s a Libra. Follow her on twitter: @thetsaritsa