Poetry: Selections from Shae Krispinsky

Pagan Prayers

I am not one of those girls who had a

crush on Christ, never traced his

abdominal cuts on the crucifix

with my eyes or fingers. I focused

 

in on the trees, the trees

evil tempters rising and luring

me away from God and his

glory. My soulmate

 

is an American linden

but in my fantasies

I cheat with a white oak

standing proud at the base

 

of a sloping Virginian valley.

It’s before this image I genuflect:

a crown of leaves, a rood of limbs.

I am an acolyte of the forest.

Bastard Sons

For Frank Stanford

The bastard sons will grow up and fall in love with other men’s wives

drinking them divine in dirty dives, floors sticky with beers

spilled in brawls, cigarette smoke a curtain dividing the truth

from the lies when asked where they were last night. They have no boots

to put beneath anyone’s bed, which surely makes them better—no, different—

than their fathers. Mothers will weep for the women who remind them

too much of themselves, their lost lives, dreams deflected, deflated

balloons that one more breath could break. Though they don’t condone

they can’t disown these sons. Were they not their own they would

want them. Apples fall from trees for mothers know sugar

could never taste so sweet. The cycle itself is complicit. Good women

always want the bad men, an unavoidable equation. They know better,

yet they too know what they want. Desire destroys by demanding

its existence. The cycle is eternal. Who would name their child purity and then push

them out into the world? Who wouldn’t?

Upstairs at the Castle

In truth, I recoil

at touch. To move our bodies

together in time, give me space,

pulsing light, a beat

so deep I can forget

the name of God. This is

my prayer: four on the floor

from a distorted 808, a guttural

moaning in German or another language

similarly indecipherable to my monolingual

American ears. When the music

is loud enough and lights strobing

and the scent of incense and smoke,

sweat, perfume, and gin, the scent

of skin and abandon, the overwhelm

crescendos, the bottom falls out.

I exist, obliterated, sound

waves, love waves, you wave,

wanting to leave. Go, go.

I’m already gone.

Little Birds

You wouldn’t have recognized that girl,

kitten heels clacking against the sidewalk,

chin up, fearless, burning with a secret pleasure,

a little licking coil. This must be how you feel

every day, shrouded in sex, but I wear

different clothes—I want to be seen, not

experienced, a tableau of girl, the lipstick

always red. You would see right through me: country girl

playing dress-up in the smallest of cities, more trains

than skyscrapers, more creeks than cement. I can’t

see you in this city, the city I think of as my

city, the first place I felt home. But you would have

liked me there. Prurient, impudent. No one

knew, which made the secret burn more brightly,

a lamp between my legs, the book

in my lap. I sat on a park bench. I held the book

up, I read, I watched, I waited for a response.

None came. I was twenty-one and happier than I’d been

in a while. I was, finally, ready to live, or at least try. I was

thin, bad skin, good smile, crooked tooth. I spent time

trying to look effortlessly striking, my life all

photographs waiting to be taken. No one stopped

and asked what I was reading. No one noticed. I was

too sly, a statue in sunlight.

I didn’t know the words I read. I had not lived

that kind of life. I never would. As messy as

my mind is, I like to keep the rest of me neat,

hermetically sealed, a Ziplock baggie of vanilla

pudding. I tried to appear otherwise, each morning

before dressing, I would stop and ask who I

wanted to be that day. Flouncy black skirt hung

below hipbones, bohemian red shawl. Magda.

Magda would read Anaïs Nin in public. She would

dance barefoot in the rain, tear through lovers

like spiderwebs, her laughter like shiny pennies

clattering on the train tracks. She belonged not in

the mountains. She could have been Nin’s rival, except

Nin had written the book and Magda merely read it.

What is more powerful than creating a self? Myriad

selves, choosing who comes out to play. My authority

was passive, benign. I ran more than I ruled; I read

more than I ran. Men in their business suits passing

on their way back from lunch. What do they see?

Too-thin girl, wrists ready for wresting, accused of

being pretentious more times than she can log.

You are not her audience. She plays

a part not meant for you. An artist would see through

her, the performance, the book, the façade, the trope. You

would know her references, would catch the shift

from I to she—you do it, too. We are

the beautiful ones, darling, we never

need to apologize.

Vaguebooking My Emotional State

It’s not the swagger but the silence, a confidence

palpable, ineluctable. Everyone is weird here, or young,

or rich, but not you.

 

I can smell the memory of you for blocks. Bergamot

and cigarettes smoke, a top note of whiskey. What does

it say about you that you only drink the smoother stuff?

You’d say: stop reading into everything so much. But

I read into you, I read into you, even if I’d rather not.

 

There’s a hint of Memphis when you speak, despite

your roots being pure Pacific Northwest. Anything

becomes malleable in time.

 

All that I want: freedom from desire.

I’m cursed. I crave it. You want

to be miserable, you tell me. No,

I want to be free. But what is the weight

of faith and why am I flying?

 

No end except the end and I

don’t know how to get there except by

being—and stopping—here.

Shae Krispinsky lives in Tampa, FL, where she fronts the band, Navin Avenue, whose sound she describes as Southern Gothic 70s-arena indie rock with a pop Americana twist. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Connotation Press, Thought Catalog, The Dillydoun Review, Vending Machine Press, Sybil Journal among others. She is currently working on her band's second album and a novel.