Poetry & photography by kerry rawlinson

​american dream 

it’s Wall Street feeding on your walls it’s a gypsy crystal orb reader
without balls it’s the petting zoo in the local Mall where kids queue
to spit on the Daily Llama & kick the Dionysian goat it’s women’s
 
sickly vote ceilinged by glass it’s the atomic mass of drive-thru café
latté it’s ruthless online trolls it’s aquarium bowls with and lakes
without fish it’s a satellite dish on every trailer it’s Norman Mailer in a
 
petticoat waving goodbye to Godot it’s the Housewives of One-Up with
new noses it’s the credit crunch it’s school lunches of coke & crack it’s
rifles & fries in the gangyard it’s avant garde sashimi swallowed with
 
Châteauneuf-du-Pape it’s a paper cup of coffee & a cardboard bed in a
dead-end nook it’s a bookless Library chock full of Dewy-Decimal porn
it’s guarding leprechaun treasure hordes in a Trumped & rainbowless
 
nation it’s a parrot that plucks its feathers in naked mortification it’s
warm opiates & cold beer to comfort your kin while you're casually
fucked over it’s deranged recriminations it’s too far and too near it’s a
 
coiled-sprung gator with its razor-mouth taped shut it's every voiceless
citizen’s silent shout it’s the four dollar lunch special that’s
always run out.

​

cover me

cover me                              Brutus--
do you have my back?                     I'm dying
for a quiet
                moment...
 
cover me                               Mata Hari--
I'm damnnear broken,                     craving
the ache of little
                 death…
 
cover me                                Salome--
dance provokes                                   a loveless urge
releases headless
                  flesh…
 
cover me                                 Benedict— 
don't turn your coat—                       I'm making a dash
into the
                 open…
 
cover me                                 Sgt. Cole--
for on my oaken casket                      worms turn
& humus
                falls…
 
cover me                                   Judas--
money's spoken.                                    You can't ever
get away from it
                  all.

​sex in the tub

my fingernails
transform
in the water
            to little fishes
 
wiggling in the
tub
little fish like
            bait
 
little 
rubbing fishes
with red painted
            lips
 
waiting for your
sharkteeth
my darling heart
            wiggling
 
for you to slide in
& nibble,
then chew.
            But the tide
 
of true heaven
has receded.
It heaves little fish
            high & dry;
           
and bleach
efficiently cleanses
any final, parting
            watermark.



​
Bio: Decades ago, autodidact & eternal optimist kerry rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Fast-forward: she follows Muses around the Okanagan, barefoot. She’s won fiction, & art contests (e.g. Geist; Postcards, Poems & Prose; Fusion Art;) been a finalist in a few more, e.g. Mississippi Valley; Ascent Aspirations; and features in pioneertown lit; Centrifugal Eye; Minola Review; CanadianLiterature; AdHoc;Adirondack Review; Five on the Fifth; and in Anthologies, e.g. Forgotten Women, by Grayson Books, amongst others. Visit: kerryrawlinson.tumblr.comor @kerryrawli.