Yes, I know you, Fear.
I know…how my mother’s body
screamed when she couldn’t get out of bed.
Her eyes would darken,
swallowing my childhood smile.
I know how my older sister hid her head
among pages, pretending to be an astronaut
and I was a suitcase she rolled over the moon.
I know how my father duct-taped his voice,
washing for hours his hands in a bathroom sink
each time he would crush the car.
I know, you are that lump in my throat
too large even for this poem to hold.
Maja S. Todorovic
Your touch is a multiple
sensation of undulating currents,
pulsating limbs:
concave urges initiate every cell
for complementary tangible breath.
In radiance, I crave for more.
Maja S. Todorovic
You remember that boy in the 5th grade that pulled your hair and called you ‘Fatty Betty’?
We know all about it.
You know that ugly bracelet your parents gave you for your 21st birthday and
how you wished it disappear?
Consider it done.
You know that fear of spiders that shows up from nowhere
each time you dust your room?
It’s gone!
Just lift your left arm, it won’t hurt…
This kind man in white coat will take care of everything, dear.
Maja S. Todorovic
It’s in the deepest darkness,
where folded life emerges only with the
raging tempest
or when silence occupies rustling shore.
Untouched they eat flickering moonlight
catch laser sunbeams and jump over foaming waves
yet, don’t recognize our white secretions
we are so proud of, cheap surrogate
of every ounce of coaled milk we suck out
of the earth’s mouth
It’s the new plankton,
It’s the new algae,
It’s the new jellyfish
and the liver transplant in that whale
over there,
they never asked for.
Maja S. Todorovic
My lungs are one large, deflated balloon,
sitting somewhere in the lost chair.
I grew branchiae instead.
You perfectly fit to this porous body,
viscous in masculine, bogus, warm-heartedness.
My shoulders carry dark cloud,
exercising lifting of heavy thoughts.
I know I’m cute, but can’t offer you a smile.
Maybe an open umbrella?
You are amorphously
voiceless, unbroken:
chameleon of the day.
Maja S. Todorovic
My friend calls it ‘tabula rasa’.
My mother says it’s when
young bull silently bleats
at a colorful display.
For me, it’s when every reason
bleeds with frustration –
senseless and unmoving,
your lonely parts
seek validation.
Purpose is given or found?
You say I’m a slave to a detail,
yet your ‘big picture’ falls apart
each time you look at it.
You say I roam in confusion
yet you don’t know which
holographic dress you will wear tonight.
And I tell you, you would squeeze
your own guts in one hand,
pierce your eye with swordfish
and walk barefoot in the mouth
of a raging volcano:
just to feel one more time,
just to cry one more time.
Maja S. Todorovic
There fire germinates with melting tongues:
rainbow icicles mirror the drifting land
growing new skin every day,
cracked, suspended in the serene call
of lactating mountains
under the Midnight Sun.
I’ll place my feet on that warm, spacious
ground, glacial time,
when Sky turns cosmic green,
in waves, traveling in between.
Maja S. Todorovic
Wears its own fame.
Starting with B.
I like how B blows out of my mouth.
Like a playful Boo!
child’s ambush from
a hidden corner
or
your surprise from behind,
hands eclipsing my eyes
and kiss in the neck,
wistful sighs.
R likes to roll on my tongue.
Wants to get out –
doesn’t want to get out.
Jumps, bounce of my teeth
and rolls like a train speeding its feet.
S likes to become shhhhh…
when I put my heavy, tired head on your
chest, nest.
All vowels and consonants
are disciplined solders, creating brigades of
syllables,
always ready to march,
when desire knocks on the door of my mouth.
Hurrying deep south.
Maja S. Todorovic
Also published here.
You know how I love it:
tie me up with your purple silk scarf,
cold glide that tights my skin,
pull my hair with your fingers
and lay down my head on a wooden pillow.
Turn off the moon:
invite darkness,
leave two holes above my nose
so I can breathe in freshens of the night.
Place my feet
in a rectangular position:
let them linger just a bit
as you wrap me in the song of
night owls and chirping crickets,
my breasts kiss the feathered leaves
scattered like ornaments around my chest.
Lock me up in the trunk of your soul,
empty tunnel echoing my heart beat
as I bath in the burgundy light of your eyes.
Use me, accuse me, lose me,
amuse me, confuse me, seduce me:
that’s all I’ve ever dreamed of.
Maja S. Todorovic
stiff and strong:
your claw plows my soft skin,
where red streams
follow the trails,
succumbing to tearful river,
as droplets gravitate towards the floor.
My eyes are riveted to the closed door.
I can always wear another skin, fur:
dress in feathers or thorny petals.
But how my scarred heart will
continue to beat,
in between these lungs
as it is like raw egg
smashed against the wall?
Maja S. Todorovic
Business in Rhyme 