PENNEY KNIGHTLY

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

When I Told You I Was a Prostitute

I noted you didn’t move,
it was like you could lean back
with me in the backseat, and we,
being homogeneous, could enter in
one another, silently but purely.

Was it wrong to think of moaning,
gripping on so many leather seats,
what it feels like to have cigarette smoke
in your hair down there, when your bones
shake with a storm but you have to keep going?

Do you have associations with summers
like I do, when your mother screams come
and you know she means a different arrival?

Realizing You Are The Desire

I see ignited tulips, down below
under my tongue there is a dark tight hole
center as round as it is long and angry
like a pine cone that rolled in meth,
like every seedy girl on a subway you want to take in your tepid mouth
and make her thighs as warm as hot buttered pancakes
and lick her off like a mother cat to her just-born kitten
sharp stabs of meows in the blue moonlight,
it feels like that to carry around, it feels.

Penney Knightly is a survivor of sexual abuse; themes about that are often found in her work. Her poetry has appeared in Broad Magazine, Big River Review, Dead King, Ink in Thirds, Burningword Journal, and elsewhere. She lives with her family on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay, where she writes and makes art. She tweets @penneyknightly and shares on her blog https://penneyknightly.com.