Venus
I know
there is nothing
I can give
to the fly
When he comes
my limbs
reach out to hold him
My petals rest
in the lull of his strangled breaths
I say
I am the bud,
I am the seed,
I am the ground,
I am
what goes in
and what grows out
As his chest fights to rise,
two dead, black legs curling in
I finally feel the tightness of all my life
loosen.
Warmly,
I fold
two wet arms
around him
Captain,
you are sinking in
and the woman in me
regrets
I never learned
to swim.
Cutting the Water
I do not let the water cover me
but it does,
I do not move
(I can’t)
and do not call out,
to nothing or
no one
over the years I’ve grown softer
but it makes no difference
to me
but to the fleshy feet that
walk on me.
I do not breathe,
I do not sing,
I am one in a million,
I sink,
thrown and held
rubbed between two fingers,
looked at briefly
by a child.
Valerie Chamberlain is a writer and educator working in Reading, Pennsylvania. Her poetry has appeared in The Lehigh Valley Vanguard and Rag Queen Periodical. She holds a Master’s Degree in education with a concentration in restorative justice and a B.A. in English with a focus in social justice in American literature.