Qatar Woman

Pin-drop on a map
something I don’t know
and cannot touch.
My fingers are too large.

Your eyes of black horse
unsettle me.
They are banished, nearly lifeless.
Eyes of taxidermy
and only reflections move inside them.

I watch you.
A tiny insect camouflaging
I look incessantly
but you don’t notice.
I am voyeur, and I am stunted.

I am always shifting side ways
my waist against the walls
of this museum.
I… a rat inside
the screams of women…

(I would rather not).

I am used to the secrets.
I am used to this.
I am an active citizen
of fear
I hide the baggage
under these brown flecks,
this gaze, un-rotted.

And so I live in quiet cult
of your anxieties,
I swear sometimes I wish
you caught me crawling
the way your hips move
under the black veil
seem to me,
deliberate
your salted female cravings
of wanting to be wanted
commingled in angsts
of being followed.
A man-slaughter fantasy
compressing.

Yulema Lecta, 05-13-2018

The Administrator

words are little cages for the things you think. when no one is watching. because words and paper are doms and only here do feelings move forward. gagged and chained. a gimp. a seductress chained to penance.
because on paper the fucking unfolds like a cracking fork. like an orgasm inside a box. and you cough and you cough.
shuffling your body on a desk,
an angered secretary
your boss with a whip.
the tension that snaps on your chest when a woman who’s mouth you want to kiss so bad in public taps you on the shoulder and you turn. like this, words fall from the chair, from the mattress. and every brute has them. formatted. tight. a slinky dress tearing just at the right place where it should. and you’re watching snug from the screen as pornographic fancies dance below your hands.
words in little cages, for the things that you think… and I like watching.

earth-candy

Linda, you are music,
incarnate,
like fruit,
earth-candy
all things that go together
sweet and salty.

You are pleasure in the negative
you induce perversion and voyeurism,
much more so when in the nude.

You are served best
in the summer,
along with all remaining sins:
the overindulgence of watermelon,
the stupefaction of chilled
white wine
the angered outburst of
the black grape
and my room at dusk.

When I am alone,
I conjure you:
a cat in heat,
remotely waiting,
titillating rage
and violence
self-consuming myself
in the process,
savoring the dense
of my poison.

detour

The edge of sunset
graces your cheek
fire-blooded black horses
course through your hair
and their breath colors
your mouth
a vast and helpless hue: a shelled
mollusk dying in the sand

You are all beauty and tragedies
the things I regard
with fear and callous
the things I long for
when I am alone,
a fantasy of suicide
tossed over my shoulder,
darting across the overpass.

I am a woman less refined
my sex appeal voided
in another time
I am not the type
that you regard
with dandelion
in your sight
not that pretty,
not that kind.

Someone else tours me
her hands accommodate
the curves unknown to
sparkling white girls with
soft-serve eyes
someone else took a detour
and came here instead of you…

Oh, and she is so much
more, in skin and likening
her waistline, complimentary
the smile she brands
onto me, coquettishly
uncertain of itself
a salmon dancing,
a juicy mermaid
underwater,
the color, urban coral
swirling, scintillant
as unruly as
a mid-moon tide

She tore through the aging canvas,
she took my gaze from you.

Skinny Legs

You’re Insta-famous now
and I’m still spectating
from afar
watching fine flesh
morph into tragedies.

I see you’ve lost the prudence
I once dreamed of destroying,
the soft and pretty, gentle thing
I craved to chew on,
savoring as it bled
through the teeth
of my zipper
and the callous of my jeans.

I never dreamed
I’d see your legs exposed,
your thighs, once pale
now sun-bathed,
full of stories, full of ink

Time has done me the disservice
of deflowering you
before I could.
nothing coy remains
nothing male, nothing ambiguous.
Your black hair. None.
From vinyl midnight to
crass and blond.

I see now…

If you, for once, played
a mischievous god,
and borrowed my eyes for fun
you would stay forever
that way:

Small and wandering,
a deep-sea fish
oblivious of the darkness
that surrounds it.
A Tiny traveler with flickers
and scintillating colors
that cuts in rivulets
the black hole,
the vacant night.

Solitary Things

You are the queen of solitary things:
the quiet candle light that sulks at night,
the emptiness that autumn rain brings,
a lover’s heart with an unspoken fear
of making something worthless much too dear,
a morning with no reason but to rise
to loner coffee cups, without a cheer,
the hurt of keeping love as disguise
when you just move along and pass me by…
raising a hand to give pity “hellos.”
So I walk on alone and I deny
with a gesture what, inside of me, grows,
the further you walk, the more that I feel
the sore of solitude that
will not disappear.

Yulema  Lecta

October 14, 2009

 

From “Confessional -2: X-Large”

You should try to pull yourself
together in my clothes.
You should try an Xtra large
and fall in love with a skinny girl:
a pretty, petite, skinny girl.

Now pretend you cannot see her
because one thing’s for sure:
You might be big
but she can’t see You.

She turns and looks elsewhere.
But that’s no excuse,
be conscious
and dress your self:
drop the neckline a few centimeters
clad your neckline in metal,
find “a memorable fragrance.”

And still,
remain transparent
despite your thick thighs
and breasts’ generous portions
despite the staggering smell
of oil and jasmine,
the eyeliner
and porno-pink lipstick.
Despite the fact
that your body,
without fact or reason
reacts to her presence.

At least once,
you should try it…
Girl, just wear it.

Yulema Lecta

October  14, 2009

Savory Soundbites: “Voyage, Voyage” – Desireless

 

My lover often experiences moments of rage in which she denounces limitations that we face as working class women. Money and it’s lack of immediacy to us is depressing and demoralizing. Her ultimate dream is to travel and document the world through the lens of her brilliant third eye (camera, jaja, just in case the metaphor doesn’t seem to catch on). We are currently working on making that muhla happen, not just so we can get married and move out, but to see the world together. Of course, this leads me to think of the inequalities that give shape to our capitalist society. To think that even in the animal kingdom, there’s always a hog that sits on top of everything while the rest scramble and die in an attempt to collect just a sliver of what is rightfully theirs. For the moment being, all we have is to work until our bones say “I surrender.” I once had a dream that she and I were in Hawaii. I could smell the salt, feel the water, see through it and marvel at the tiny fish around our legs. Sobbing, I told her, “I can’t believe we made it here” as I looked into her eyes. The heaving of my chest is what ended up rousing me from sleep… sadly.

Even so, I firmly believe in the power of asking the sky for guidance. Much the same way I have freed myself from crippling bouts of depression, so too, I believe we will make our mass escape come true.  And some day, nous glisserons nos ailes sous le tapis du vent.

 

Prismatic Lens

Half God, Half Science
I love watching
From a distance
How you split
Colors with
Your prismatic lens

With the click
Of a button,
You mount
Undressing beaches
Over forevers,
Capture the heavens
Dropping their
Veils in Erotic
Surrender.

In passing,
I leave you
Undisturbed
To trap the
Earth’s
Seductive poses
In what seems
(At first glance)
A tiny and
Unceremonious box

Only you can convert
Rainbows into diatoms,
What you do to me
With your hands
You do onto the
Landscape with
Your eyes,
Archive the horizon’s
Pornography
when the sun slips
Its head between
The sky line’s legs

In that same manner
I wish to be seen:
A mosaic of
Music, hues
And sex,
The opal imprint
Of a ghost in motion
Housed inside
The strange and
Voyeuristic
Gallery of
Your wander
-lusting soul.

Beyond her Bounds

Through veils and
bullet-proof glass,
I watch men’s shadows
move across the misery
of their self-proclamations.

At the edge
of the electric fence,
I move toward
such sweet
and warranted
exile
a woman covered
in midnight
from head to toe.

They say an animal,
once captive,
cannot survive beyond
her bounds
but I am living proof
that this is untrue.

My Elysium is their ignorance
my paradise, the
tiny gaps in which their
eyes find unreason,
allowing for escape.