The Hound That Bit

Sophia Golovanevskaya- Western Australian writer.

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Sowing stitches in my spine & painting pink on my cheeks I sang ‘Heaven Is a Place on Earth’ (with you). Wiping spilt ink off love letters perfected that read I am O.K. Are you? I didn’t realize they had been your bullets in my back.

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‘Strangers’ - Part 1. Previously published in Tenderfoot “Renewed” Volume 6, Issue 1. October 2016.

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Bodhi Mending cut heels & sucking blood from my tongue through false teeth; I won’t be the first of my kind to admit it took me a while to realize I would not reach enlightenment by reading red wine stains on my bed sheets. Bright-eyed and torn between my left and right lung, I had forgotten how to use both to breathe.

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You told me to grow up honey, the world ain’t made of magic just because the sand lights up beneath your feet at the beach, that’s just physics baby, stop searching for poems where they don’t belong. I said get real honey, you can’t speak without spitting- what makes you think I don’t know that the sand doesn’t glow? But don’t you think it’s funny, that the sand stays the same beneath your feet while you’re stepping on my words?

Grow Up Honey - Part 1 (text)

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The Sea - A recent uni assignment

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‘Grow up Honey’ (part 1)

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The Road - A recent Uni assignment.

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Small town syndrome

Whiskey sours, candy licks, split lips and broken hearts, they’re more catastrophes than people round these parts there are women with their eyelids smeared burnt-sugar-black and men with moss and mucus oozing out their backs don’t give me drowned out streetlights, spilt salt on bars or bathroom floors I’d like more than restocked liquor shelves, and beer taps growing grime- I got South Georgia on my mind.

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‘Watchu drinkin?’ (part 2), featured in South Georgia On My Mind zine.

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Excited by hatred you laughed at me and spat about destruction and love and poison on your tongue Talked of bravery & sadness as if they go hand-in-hand turned to me and spat dull-cold-blooded red. It sounds romantic but it wasn’t- there’s not much whimsy in shattered teeth and hearts.

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Drunk, blind and beautiful the black woman sings ‘While our beds are burning, the white man hums himself to sleep’

Previously published in Tenderfoot “Renewed” Volume 6, Issue 1. October 2016.

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For a Friend Old men spit the sweetness of her lips could burn a house down her mother croons her first words sung resembled spark poetry- her father doesn’t look her in the eye.                                         Boys nickname her Spice; the taste of her tongue makes their eyes water, their stomachs turn they write promises on pennies to throw into wells, they slobber sermons of heavens and hells. They call her angel but she looks the other way. Her mouth drools confessions of hunger in more places than her belly. Says she’s starving for more places than a home. Smiles at old men hoping they spit wisdom- but they ain’t good for much except wailing anguish after pretty, brave girls like you. Angels will be angels baby, but you ain’t nothing short of a woman.

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Happy Hour

The tap is opened; Golden liquid pours into the glass like sweet honey into a jug. The bees buzz, waiting for their prize.

God is on the wall. His ticking hands are counting down, til the jukebox plays Piano Man and the drinks become half price.

7 minutes left.

There’s a man whose eyes shine like sugar. He said he’s had a long day Boss has got me by the fuckin’ balls, he says. He dreams of swimming in his golden glass, rather filling his lungs; Drowning.

There’s a woman whose eyelashes look like snowflakes. Her skin tells stories of the blizzards it’s been in. She says she dreams of being a mother again My son doesn’t treat me like one, she says. She throws her head back, lets out a symphony of earthquakes.

3 minutes left.

The honey’s getting thicker now, it’s swallowing the carpet. It drips from the ceiling like heroin as the buzz for Piano Man gets louder. You can feel the vibrations now, Coming from the inside of everyone’s bellies.

1 minute left.

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Untitled poem ('I write down the things I like about you') by Sophia Golovanevskaya

An old poem published in the independant Perth poetry magazine; Uneven Floor, 2014.

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Strangers

Yes- somewhere there are lovers who are burning holes in bedsheets from the friction between their hipbones.

Somewhere, there is a man who cuts his fingers from picking wildflowers. To rest his thoughts and colour his windowsill.

Somewhere there is a woman who knows how to get what she wants. But she still paints faulty strokes with her brush in hopes someone will understand why she is the way she is.

Girl, we both know that somewhere in the world a man exists, with bleeding fingers that would call you sugarnips and suck you like a wet peach.

You just haven’t met him yet.

And man, we both know that somewhere in the world a girl with a gap between her two front teeth promises herself that she’ll never fall

in love with a boy who calls it ‘making love’ and who picks wildflowers for her windowsill.

But that’s just because she hasn’t met you yet.

Previously published in Tenderfoot “Renewed” Volume 6, Issue 1. October 2016.

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Untitled

I found worms in my hair, started picking them out with my fingers. But when I was done I watched as they crawled back

                                      Up my arms

           Under my nails

            Through the cracks         in my skin

Into my mouth and

down to my stomach.

 There they stay trapped.

No matter how much I stick my fingers down my throat there they will remain.

They’ve become a part of me.

Do you understand?

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On Path Like a stick of morphine shoved into my veins, sometimes I get a rush to the head that rolls my eyes back, knocks my heart right out of its chest when I remind myself that you are not forever. I pierced my skin with the tip of a feather to see if I bled, I stuck it into my shoulder blade to see if it would make me fly, I handed it to you in reassurance that it wouldn’t change us; that we’d stay the same on two feet, on ground, on path. But you snatched it and ripped it with such fury that I wished I was dead, you said: I’d make my fingers bleed from counting the times I’ve told you to try, and you sprouted your own feathers from the shoulders on your back and flew away.