- Water Serpents II
After Gustave Klimt
Personally
~~
~~ If you ask me
~~ I’d love anything
La **** La~~~~~~~
la la la la la ~~~~~ LACRIMOSA set!
La—_—_—_—_—¿¿ glossy eyes me!
HOOKED _ kissy lips free!
UPON HANGED — Shimmery skin
in the silence BODIES ON ——————
ahh, the silence THREADS ——————
we are glory BAIT we are —— the sea serpents
And _______ Loch-ness lovers
hail ———— fallacies ____ inamorata
the —————— I don’t think we should be here —————_———
————— lord sounds a bit like a punchline our name is gone
Sunburnt
Bodies Bodies Bodies ~~~~~~ is our love so special?
That you had to bury it, ~~~~~~ drown it in the raging seas
Bodies Bodies Bodies quick kiss before the next wave comes
Entangled Entangled Entangled
We cry to the sky
~~~~ ——————— And say “I love you”
~~~~~~~ ———— ~~~~~~ ——— ~~~~~~ ——
SERPENTINE water plaguing SLUTS
NYMPHIA ~~~~~ NUN
*** But the sky says
I really love my wife ‘ We are love ,
La *** La~~~
~~ Le ~~ Lo
We sing songs
with pocked chords
we sing a song
so sung before.
This piece is based on Gustave Klimt’s “Water Serpents II”, which (I think) is about women’s bodies and lesbian love. This poem retells that scene through the mythological figures of serpents and nymphs, and their coiled, iridescent bodies as a metaphor for lesbian desire. Lines such as “Say, is our love so mythical? // that you had to bury it / drown it in the raging seas” or “SERPENTINE water plaguing SLUTS” address both the erasure and the bias queer women encounter, depicting the lovers as both idealized and detested. At the same time, “we sing songs // with pocked chords // we sing a song // so sung before” writes that lesbian love, no matter how often seen as outside the norm, is just love —continuous with the songs lovers have always sung.
I’ll be honest, when trying to reason out whether or not to submit to this issue, I found myself in this ouroboros-esque self fulfilling loop, where I’d first doubt myself from submitting, then read the issue description, thereafter consider submitting and alas, restarting the cycle. “Water Serpents II” is not my best work. Its first draft was laughed at by a bunch of RI guys, and I’ve been editing (or over-editing) it ever since. I’m rather ashamed of it, really, in both its quality and its content; as a queer teenager still trying to figure oneself out, writing a poem like this (and worse, imagining it out in public) feels scandalous. But maybe that’s exactly why it belongs here.
