rocket water
eglantine
wooden moon on the roof
signs of night &
the red motorbike's
bleeding muscle
fleshed stalk dripping
and overgrowing our evening
it too
a sign of darkness
a leek's fat body
the red motorbike
our night fire
ravishment of chrome
steel
our red motorbike glazed
with henna and betel it squirts
salmon juice between the dark
of our thighs it sprouts
and shouts at the bar
it wears a portion of
evening in its eye
it sloughs off sleep like
the bushes drop resin &
berries
our rags dip purring in
even redder roar
our muscles softly skip sweet
sweat flickers we polish
carefully &
assiduously our eyes are perched
on steel antennae surely there is
nothing redder than our motorbike
steed
we will live on it
our red tent
dig our claws into
its heart cherries meat it
shouts out
spittle rip
the juice instructs
the eyes
in the language of iron
the red night squats
pressed against our motorbike
we ride hunting little girls
in the wooden sky
Source: Poetry (November 2007).
MORE FROM THIS ISSUE
This poem originally appeared in the November 2007 issue of Poetry magazine
Recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian poet, playwright, and novelist. Born to a Catholic-Viennese mother and a Jewish-Czech father in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Jelinek grew up in Vienna and lost many members of her family to the Holocaust.
Jelinek studied music intensively from an early age. She graduated from the Vienna Conservatory and studied theater and art history at the University of . . .
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Poems by Elfriede Jelinek
