<i><b>Wicked Alice Poetry Journal

wicked alice| fifth anniversary issue



Matina Stamatakis

Alice, Your Dress Has Me Now

I'm not lost in your taffeta yet,
but I feel with time you will smother me
like a bug; toadstool hopper I'm not--

you cannot listen to reason when smoke
plumes air, or cross boundaries with a cat--
it just doesn't happen

poor Alice,

my tongue is not drinking you just yet,
but when it does it will be a mataphor
for ungraspable events

we spend giving in to crumb cakes,
desires, our own fixed Chesire smiles--

and with teeth, blur lines of sanity
and play.




DON'T DRINK

It's a liquor most intoxicating
you can't escape, but be still

the Queen sits marking your breath
in chicken scratches and a friendly game
of croquet

in which heads will roll sugar plums,
kiss the ground you tread--

death is not an option, don't drink

until you've fed.




EAT

It's a play on vanity
when you say you'll have
just

one

more

bite.


Matina L. Stamatakis currently resides in upstate New York, and is editor of the e-poetry/art collective Venereal Kittens.  She has had works featured in various online and print magazines.  Her most recent poems have appeared in: Coupremine, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, and Listenlight