Violence on the screen
in sharp contrast
to the sharpened senses,
every sensual nerve opened
and seeking
The succulence of my body
entombed
within the hard shell of a withering summer,
And then
then there was the taste of you,
the wetness of your tongue,
the softness of your lips.
Resuscitated
I am all plumped up.
I am the desert flower in spring.
and you are the water
that brings the bloom
The harshness of the screen
discordant
to the soft slippery of my body.
The liquid of you still
warm in my center.
I am
dripping in desire.
I am the selkie underwater.
I am the
Being Undulated.
I am the freed seal in open ocean.
You are the current
through which I flow
The aggression on the screen
a trespass
to the lovingness that centers my cells.
Labia swelling.
Nipples engorging,
Desire surges in waves I
keep contained.
The outside form masking the
inner storm.
I am waiting on your lead.
My longing is a desert flower seeking water
the seed seeking soil.
My body is a selkie seeking open ocean
and the seed seeking soil.
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 2020
The story behind the poem
There is something strange and sad in the way this culture treats sexuality, nudity, and touch. America in particular seems to want our eros folded up and put away in a closet, as though desire were something to be a little ashamed of. Kept private. Kept quiet. Kept off the professional page. For a long time I went along with it. Poems like this one felt far too intimate to share, so I kept them locked away.
As an elder now, I have no interest in being complicit in the shaming of this beautiful life force energy. I have crossed into my sixties and the overculture likes to decide that women my age are finished as sexual beings, that desire comes with an expiration date, that an elder is someone no longer has a sexuality. This poem is my quiet refusal. I am still here, still sensual, still a fully alive and desiring body, and I will not be put in that box. Consider it a small act of defiance, and an invitation: your eros belongs to you at every age, and it was never anything to be hidden.