Leonard
Jane Flett is a philosopher, cellist, and seamstress of most fetching
stories. Her poetry features in Salt’s Best British Poetry 2012 and her
fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio and performed at the
Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is one half of the riot grrrl
band Razor Cunts.
He said, “Your thighs are a ruin,
you want too much,” and he was
half right. My wants are legion
/ Jane Flett
and renegade: harsh April throbbings,
pulsations, ivy snatching at soil.
I am open from the throat down—
a grappling hook barking at rocks.
But there are no ruins here. My
thighs are maps blotched with
green-blue-bruise cartography, my skin
agave and cigarettes. Ripe for
licking. Ready to inhale. There is
nothing in the twilight squelch that could
split or sully my limbs; you can take
all night and still, I’ll be left
with feathers. I am hallucinatory with
want—for mouths, liquor, brazier embers
at dusk. I want everything in quantities.
Exactly the right amount.