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The Check up
Crushed velvet. Vinyl. Feather mattress.
My back would choose if it could.
This morning it’s cold metal,
Cyclops fingers, his flashlight eye
Numbering off my minerals
Chanting my diseases in a round. Nest and serpent,
My shoes and stockings are in a tangle below me.
My blouse is spinning toward the ceiling.
How many partners have you had?
How many partners have your partners had?
On the ceiling I see a pirate in the stucco —
A man with two noses looking afflicted.
Have any of your partners had a blood transfusion between 1973 and 1981?
One had thoughts for hands – a different mood for every finger.
One placed a glass of water by his bed every night
And asked me to drink from it in the morning.
Have any of your partners been hemophiliacs?
Doctor, I didn’t come this far to write my numbers in your book.
One wrote the word eggplant on my belly.
One drank broth for breakfast. One stopped touching me after awhile.
Have any of your partners had same sex partners?
Have any of your partners had multiple partners?
One had brown, curly hair. He had a radiant smile.
Have any of your partners’ partners had multiple partners?
Have any of your partners used intravenous drugs?
One had thirteen blue paintings and a yellow shoe.
One turned my hands over like cards.
He pulled a quill from under my fingernail.
Have any of your partners had partners that used intravenous drugs?
One made his living chalking pool cues, another would have made an excellent
mother.
He said to me, “For all your accordion bodies, for all your paper dresses joined
At the hems and wrists, I wouldn't wish you one pair of scissors.”
Take these cremes, take these jellies. Protect yourself.
Doctor, I didn’t come this far to be filled with your prescriptions.
Take these condoms and mousetraps.
My nipples turn copper, then rose.
I need conversations in bed. I need slices of cantaloupe and avocado.
Take these disinfectants. Take these round packets of pills.
I didn’t come this far.
Outside the Embassy
The business suits call linda, linda, linda after my dress.
A donkey decides to pull his cart across the bridge,
Un viejo stretches out his arm to lead me through mud.
They happen to me as you do – in time-elapsed seconds, inanimate
And animated at once. Where the stingray’s birth is a ripple,
Where the gardenia’s flowering cells are one mouth opening and closing.
The ambassador is swallowed into three pieces by his suit.
The mule nudges morning into the dark corner of its stall,
The linen pockets of the old man’s guayabera stare out at the Atlantic.
If language is the minute and love the second hand, then you are the ticking
Of silence and syllables. You are what time does when we say it stands still.
What Your Hand Told Me
It is certain, the confusion
Between the fork and the knife,
The scraping of each tine against the ceramic plate.
You used to unfasten the meat from its sauce
With the skill of a violinist.
You tilted your head gently
And took up the knife like a bow, releasing
Each note of pink pepper and black pepper,
Each melody of cinnamon from its paste.
Now the distraction between the curved handle
And the serrated edge. You attack the meat
With the stained hand and jerky elbow of a carpenter.
You eat by naming each ingredient --
Pink pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, blade.
Poems
© Mia Leonin 2004. All rights reserved.
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Mia
Leonin teaches writing at the University of Miami. Last year she
gave birth to Rafaela on Labor Day! This year she loves the
online magazine "for thinking mothers" Brain,
Child. She has recently been published in the print
journals Indiana Review, New Letters and River Styx.
She feels internet publications are inevitable and exciting and
believes that the "simultaneity of language and
accessibility of people online seems good for poetry", but
she admits to being a tactile reader, print bound, and still
likes reading poetry on the page. Florida is the only city she's
lived in where she can hear roosters crowing in the morning.
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Portrait
of Mia Leonin © Henry Denander 2004. All rights reserved.
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Poetry
Michael Rothenberg
Diane Thiel
Nick Carbo
Mia Leonin
Michael Hettich
Campbell McGrath
Kelle Groom
Steve Kronen
Kemel Zaldivar
Pris Campbell
Michael-Earle Carlton
George Murphy
Howard Camner
Geoffrey Philp
Terri Carrion
Nancy Knutson
Jonathan Rose
Barbra Nightingale
Ian Krieger
James Brock
Amy Serrano Zorrilla
Denise Duhamel
Virgil Suarez
Micro-Fiction & Shorts
Terri Carrion
Diane Thiel
Artists
Artist Intro
Ivonne Bess
Diego Quiros
John Canning
Jeff Filipski
Arlene Magloire
Cassandra
Gordon-Harris
Holly Picano
TRES
Mia Leonin
Terri Carrion
Richard Blanco
Interviews
Campbell McGrath
Maureen Seaton
Previous Volume
Volume 16
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