Your scythe tongue slices around my clit 
a nub of nipple—you feed and suck 

I feed you sweet milk under the slow and silent ceiling fan 
air blows across your carved back 
muscle, scars—gunshots and fragments from Nam 
stabbings from gang life post-Nam 
the shanks you caught in prison 

I fed you and starved myself 
i became flatbread and needed—
your hands vice gripped my hips 
shook me awake 

You liked taking me from the back 
the way my spine concaved 
while standing—you’d bite my neck 
when we came together 
from resistance and voltage 
moments Ohm’d 

Walking on the deer trails past this meadow 
to the sunny spot where i buried your ashes 
i take off my shoes 
the earth licks my feet 
my nipples thimble—receive the soft tongue breeze 
remember 
when you feathered your wet cock 
across my back

Suzanne S. Rancourt

is a multimodal artist of Abenaki/Huron descent, an expressive arts therapist, and the author of two books: Billboard in the Clouds (Northwestern University Press, 2004), which received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award, and murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, 2019). A third book, Old Stones, New Roads, is forthcoming Spring 2021 from Main Street Rag Book Publishers; and her fourth, Songs of Archilochus, seeks a press. A veteran of the USMC and the US Army, Suzanne holds an MS degree in psychology (SUNY) and an MFA in writing (Vermont College of Fine Arts).

For a comprehensive list of her publications, please see her website: https://www.expressive-arts.com/Artists--Page.html