Double dutch of my
heart the black top’s
no place to slap yourself, slack
you won’t scale the veins’ chain-
link fence, win against asphalt, or halter-
jerk rope yourself to some transcendence.
Your fault, your falter-
start fissure will crack every
mother’s back vertebrae worry, way you
race my precarious staircase of ribs,
training to cranium, inverting sky,
mistaking lights
sugar-shook down through the streets,
for beacons—you drop— I can’t lie, stubborn muscle,
I tire, I try, have tried
talking you down from beat -down up- lifting
to rally from flat line, peaks valleys a side-walk of rhyme
won’t resolve, dissolved
out through the skinned knees will tell you
how wipe out is no
out, so pant through this block
through this blockage age age old, your hold-on
through chambers come, seize now, lay siege to all doubt
slung through the lungs, pound
the inadequate chord into song let’s go, turn on
glamorous, even, your regular beat,
a constant skirt flouncing
you little flirt, trouble pump somehow I’m lassoed
and double clutch stuck, you are mine and I want you,
nine ounces of hurt
Self-Indictment, with Arrhythmia
Cate Lycurgus received her MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington, where she served as poetry editor for Indiana Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets 2012, and elsewhere.