Mariel Alonzo
on pork and camellia
as if by cutting the meat
you release its flowers—
frail parallel lines
leaping through
a cliff & graze
at sedimentation
crashing lightweight
on plastic chopping
boards—hymn of fracture
wings, quiet
pornography of marble
pushed into
a grinder—
whine & gristle
of gunmetal
& mechanic
song of pre-germination,
see the veins
of a hummingbird’s jaw
bulge, nectar sluicing
through its hollow—
behind the knees, soft
armpit & elbow
in pulse,
stretch marks betraying
ripeness
as each tendril claws
to form a nest,
peppered & salted
& palmed, laid
to rest in antiquity
tattooing prisons
on flesh,
a blooming
to baroque petals
of rain, unsalted, as it hits
the murk of flood, hissing,
how quick you took
me to heaven
and left me there.
Mariel Alonzo’s work has appeared in Softblow, Toasted Cheese, Tower Journal, Santa Clara Review, blackmail press, and other journals. Her poem “On Pork & Camellia” was selected by Tarifa Faizullah as an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry. Mariel was a finalist for the 2015 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest and the 2015 Winter Tangerine Awards. She hails from Davao, Philippines.
This poem appeared in The Adroit Journal.