Submission MaryGrayKaye

name: MaryGrayKaye
email: marygraykaye@gmail.com
title and genre: A WINGED THING, AND HOLY

pitch: Genevieve Dupont hungers for the love of a poet. In that pursuit, she becomes one. The love disintegrates; the poetry flourishes.

first words: At first it is the voice flowing down the oaken library table like a rivulet along a forest floor. It carries words I hardly hear, poetizing an act of love – …lying with a woman brings thoughts of mountains…bones rising up out of her flesh…soft wetness, the warmth…. Now the voice wraps around the words – …a snake-like river…uncoiling slowly in the sun….
The recitation transforms this after-hours poetry workshop into a sexual experience, not what I anticipated with the promotional flier’s promise of an introduction to verse – Sweetest is being held by a woman….

My body tenses. Bending forward I catch a glimpse of the face six chairs down churning out the baritone strains, a stoic face in concentration, tanned and gaunt, sculpted by years of emotion. His eyes look over spectacles to read the words he has put to paper. He enunciates each syllable so we can absorb as sensitively as he has experienced the very act of penetration –…she takes the seed as the earth takes seed in the spring…

As he reads, the summer evening sun seeps through the elongated gothic windows behind us. His shadow creeps across the table distracting me, engaging me. In the background I hear this lover describe his beloved in lilting tones, the admiration and the lust tripping over each other in lines of unending beauty. I absorb that love. If I could write such poetry; if I could find such love.