Pushcart Press Special Mention–Erika Brumett
Posted on February 3, 2021
The Black Mountain Press is honored to announce that our Pushcart nominated poet Erika Brumett received a special mention in this year’s Pushcart Prize publication!
Here is her Poem nominated for Pushcart this issue:
~Cunnilingus~
The word sounds like a low
–
hung cloud,
weighed down below scuds of cirrus.
Yet its vowels lift
—
softer, loftier,
than cumulus. Cunnilingus
could be the name of some Roman
emperor. Or a butterfly’s
phase, that
stage of glisten and change,
when silk glands lace the chrysalis.
Cunnilingus could be a cyst
on the esophagus, the pause
before a lie, a fantasy
novel’s protagonist pegasus.
Its syllables flit the tongue, gill
–
slit
the lips, as might the secret
dialects of sly, benthic fish.
The suffix, in fact, means “to lick.”
Its prefix, predictably, is vulvic.
But why did cunnilingus slip
from diction, only to be forgotten
with the argot of Victorian
porn and couch
–
fainting vixens?
Imagine cunnilingus high
–
fived over pitchers of Budweiser,
sexted on iPhones, murmured in bed
–
rooms, where night churns and little matters
but the waves, the swell, the way
moonglow makes blankets look liquid.
What term better enacts subject?
It ticks across
the palate, whorls
around the uvula, lapping
sound toward meaning. The word
is origami
—
folding,
unfolding
—
paper too moist
to hold the V
–
creases of cranes.
Cunnilingus opens one mouth
—
splits
it slick
—
so as to
open another.