POET-IN-RESIDENCE, 1.4: Eleni Sikelianos

From the Flatmancrooked Winter 09/10 Poet-In-Residence, Eleni Sikelianos, comes selected poems, chosen by the poet from her body of work. These posts will appear every Sunday for the next ten weeks, after which a new Poet-In-Residence will be introduced and his or her work featured. This number 2 of 10. The poems featured in previous weeks can be found here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3

(from The Lover’s Numbers)

#63

____si vis me flere

­_____—Horace

if you want to see me flower

vis-à-vis your hot diminutive hand

my heliocentric little parliament of bees

then ellipse the bees as bees are

so perplexed when expressed in more abstract

terms & deaf

to the contiguity/stroke invention

if you want to see me flower_____ parlay, name

the lacteal season in your mouth who’s dumb-housed now — Tell your ten

fingers how far down to go — below

_____Believe

& see how my hymn of her lies unmustered, distant (hymen)

& see how my lingua-clots uncloud

o erudite little ambush

if you want to see me flower

Then whistle. Then whistle.

From The Lover’s Numbers, a crown of so-called sonnets for Laird, published in 1994 in Guy Bennet’s Seeing Eye Books series in 1998.