Peach Delphine
Peach Delphine is a queer femme poet from Tampa. Late 1970s high school, former cook. Work in Alocasia, Beestung, Moist, UCity Review, Feral and others.
Easy read of the poem in the images above:
repertoire
voices sanctified authentic refined
processed rarefied erasure
and craft of reductions passing
is the technique of forcing product
through a fine screen remnants
scraped from the drum discarded
refuse by a sweeter name
deconstructed by any number of processes
what we have reassembled no longer rests easy
with words of the whole the privileged
bitter salt essential food groups caffeine
based we would eat standing up on loading
dock leaning grateful for the silence and a smoke six
more hours call and response grill
radiant world fire flesh salt cayenne paprika sweet and hot
garlic in quantity fire char marking hot polished
brush pumice sweat salt steel face of spice heat
sweat salt six hours call and response no ticket rack
just hold that shit in your head never mind the chafe
guard your dry towel
hands fold roses relief carve rind
trade not trad
tradespeople hourly right to work states trades
not a learning experience not an option
but the life itself from back door loading dock alley
professionalism and the planter lifestyle
a galleria of display supervision blue light
strobe necessary ambience
black robes forced labor don’t ask
don’t tell what happens to sisters
behind the wire don’t question salinity
soaking into aquifer
vast plume perfectly visible
baked into your bread ground
into your pet food rancid air lingering
what won’t wash
again and again
compulsions or adaptive behaviors
words no longer contained by tongue or breath
hands emptied ear tuned to the whisper and shimmer
of concertina jangling accompaniment slow tumbling chorus
shuttered lights service and mastery interlaced microeconomies
of colonialism trade is how we defined ourselves the life
itself without ownership or license there are no betrayals
in a land of mercenaries we will never swim
that river our passports remain unstamped
a crooked road thicket and tangle
tongue unsalted eye without candle
what was sold as spectacle a different struggle
for bait dog or bitch place where hurt is compressed
crystallization a lozenge wedged between cheek and gum
demitasse of bitter served hot have a shot maybe two
breaking open morning fragrant with flower
precarious as any methodology as any breath
each day crackling with necessity living on hot links
slaw pickled peppers hand to mouth ever a weather eye
ever a step ahead shading corners mindfulness
threading smooth surfaces residencies of wind
smoke and wave life walking an endless grid
pavement property patrols a long lineage
denying definition passing through proscription
trade is the life of the body sinew blood spit
sweat definitions are the blunt instrument
the transgression with which we are painted over
fierceness bleeding through every time
