Beshrew

i don’t want you to think this is about domesticity.

it’s a good thing i can’t feel or touch you. your

mouth studded with sugar. i collapse you at the

end of a long hallway, peacock carpets, gilded

elevator doors. i’m not prepared to look after a

grown man. walls in forest mural, and there you

crouch in every tree. a few minutes of every

day for the rest of my lifeache, i’m in love with

you. i’m sitting at the end of your bed wraithescaped,

my hair done up in a twist. your hair

raked back with your fingers when you’re going

full throttle regret. but i don’t. foxed crypt.

epitaphs running. running for your life

underground, wet tunnel, arms trembling

over your head. this is politics. this is it.





Sonnet 31, Beshrew

Danielle Pafunda earned a BA in Russian literature and creative writing from Bard College in New York, her MFA in poetry from the New School and her PhD in English Literature from the University of Georgia. She has taught creative writing, English literature, gender and women's studies, queer studies, cultural diversity and disability studies at Columbia College Chicago, University of Wyoming, University of California San Diego, and University of Maine.

first lines: 

1. I call to report the body. Call the number


2. What is the angle of impact? What


3. My husband’s herringbone tie.


4. There’s a rust stain on the porcelain


5. I’m feeding your pages into the storm drain


6. As a feral thing would. As a dead leaf


7. Come alone for just as long as we need


8. I attend a genetically modified sonata.


9. I eat foam and worms directly from your mouth


10. I can’t stop. Stored up until loosed one after the


11. Where will I touch you, my hand under the dais


12. Rarely. I don’t think of your pleasure


13. You arrange the eclipse to direct me


14. I can’t publish this. It’s all about your raw


15. The guilt keeps my hand coiled tightly


16. I want something bad to happen. So badly.


17. I tail my lover to her workshop


18. As a horse would. A wild horse would.


19. Butcher’s jaw that I imagine cracking cold wind.


20. Get the fuck away from me, then. I’m sick and free.


21. Don’t think you know me. First of all, I’ll never


22. With my side of the bed cum-dulled.


23. My lover gets hold of this book and won’t stop.


24. Time to touch touch touch you. Time to spell it


25. Did I embarrass you, petting on you like that?


26. I like trouble more than sex,


27. Be sure, I had a best friend when I met you.


28. On your chest are printed the names of the dead.


29. I set your copyright page on fire. I light it and


30. This is how I get you to come in the yard. I set


31. Ratty, Ratty, boom-ba-latty


32. I want you to see me and convulse. Whatever you were


33. I bleach long thin strips of paper from your


34. When they knife you in the gut, it’s my blood that


35. In the shipping container, I begin an opera.


36. A rat is my ghost of choice tonight.


37. I don’t want you to think this is about domesticity.


38. A rat brings me a bottle of Xanax.


39. My therapist from the cold place


40. Going down on the dead sisters in a metal box


41. I vain crush


42. Rat and Skinny went to bed.


43. In the shipping container, unearned terror is


44. This is the book in which I love you. This is Option 1.


45. Today you can adore me.


46. I don’t wonder what they’re thinking


47. A bundle of clawed insects


48. It’s gritty on this loose slab of Lino.


49. Whose wet foot on the floor? Surely