Dion O’Reilly

PUSSY NECK ODE

                                                                    after Sharon Olds

Vagina neck. Twat gullet.
Neck with brain wrinkles
that yank me from hallucinations
of my un-sagged past.
Pussy neck, you reveal
what was hidden—
secret sea winkle. Tide-flower. Fuzz-dimple
I learned to love. Pet
I forget to look at for years.
Jello-junk I still squeeze
before I fall asleep.
How did you travel up my country,
land at my neck,
complicate the frontier between
chin and throat? Oh, folly—
thinking my parts
were singular. That my baby hatch,
my eentsy twig of split second
joy, my pee whistle
are different from
any other piece of me.
I should have known—
the puss is not strange.
Not unique. She knew
the sister snatch–
the similar mouth, ruby-
split, with lips and spit.
The other tunnels—
one so close—
of sleek and diverse
pleasure, all leading
to the deep of me.
Pussy neck, you puckered,
just at the moment
when the spiced bloodlet,
the moon-timed harvest,
leak-out from the empty
sac finally ceased. When age-
heat flushed me. Oh, pussy neck,
flower below my face. Last blossom
of the drooped vine. Trail
of the body’s falling star.

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DION O’REILLY‘s first book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Narrative, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, New Ohio Review, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies. She facilitates poetry workshops in a farmhouse full of wild art and is a member of the Hive Poetry Collective which produces radio shows, podcasts, and events in Santa Cruz. Find her at dionoreilly.wordpress.com

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Read more by Dion O’Reilly:

Poem in the Cincinatti Review
Poem in Poetry Daily
Poem in Canary