A Reimagining of ‘A World's Wife’

These poems are inspired by and a play on the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and published in her collection, “A World’s Wife.”

---

Hayley is an emerging writer and journalist who works hard to create work that is fiercely feminist, anti racist and anti oppression on a whole. You can check out more of her work and content on her instagram @hayley.headley

Rough, Sugar, and Spellbound

Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels

ROUGH

My thighs are made of marble,

And between them the cradle

The singing bowl,

of humanity.

Rosebuds and baby’s breath.

My stomach could be

The arid steppes, and sunshine,

Hungry hands, and desperate lips

Slip upward the side of my breasts,

Like mountains of sugar.

Melting into comfort at their peak,

The door to forever.

Inside me,

You finally reached the balmy jungle of my mouth.

You breathed that I;

Taste like blueberries.

SUGAR

That golden thread is eternal,

As it snaps in two,

Drops of honey.

Across and over your lips

I am a martyr for that mouth.

You are buzzing in my ears

All I can hear is you,

I am deafened.

I would crawl across this page,

To the place where what I want coils

To be crowned queen of your hive.

I want your teeth, bared.

Like I want them to rip, and snap, and tear.

Clean the sugar from my skin,

Honeycomb strings.

SPELLBOUND

I smell the magic on your skin,

Mixed with the musk of your perfume.

Your lips pull into a smile, sly, wet

A secret like rose petals.

Your eyes a circle of salt.

I hear the chant in the sway of your hips,

Calling, culling, the ritual of you.

I imagine you bathing in milk,

Wine pouring down your chin.

Black cat at your window, a whistle into the night.

You oil your breasts and sigh.

We are the witches of the past,

Naked in the woods.

We swim in the moonlight, the flames.

My lips, red as Bishop’s bodice, burn.

Bones, runes, witching cards, your collarbones,

A coven, a coven, you say

The alchemy of womankind.

---

Emalee Long is a linguistic anthropologist who works in the field of propaganda analysis, her passion is in poetry and her works have been published online at 86 Logic and The Showbear Family Circus, or in print at Milestones 2018. She lives and writes in Little Rock, Arkansas. Find her on Instagram @emaleave.me.alone