Catherine Palmer

By September 8, 2016 Uncategorized

Catherine Palmer (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

The Hearts on the Vines

The hearts on the vines smile, the white hearts
bloodless as albino babies.
     They pump nothing.

A man
                  (silent opening of spiracles,
                  membrane primed to snap)
finds a deep and heady music
between layers of lipid.
A man
            is masticated.

And the white hearts smile:
truncated sadness. They know
where the path leads, trees leaning in anticipation
and proteinaceous like silk.
      They bare flaxen teeth.

A woman's fingers
                  (swelling like amoebae under milk sheen,
                  skin of a tough and wizened greed)
encircle a molten core.
She listens rapturous; it beats for her alone.
A woman
      is consumed.

The hearts on the vines smile.
       They are cold.

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