Patricia Hickerson
New York City native Patricia Hickerson holds degrees from
Barnard College and San Francisco State, and a doctorate from
University of Southern California. As a child she danced in
Warner Bros. movies, and has worked as an artist’s model,
teacher, copy editor, fiction writer for Penthouse
publications. Her poetry has been published in the broadside,
At Grail Castle Hotel, from Rattlesnake Press, and the
collection, Daughter and Mother. Some of the present
poems have appeared in Echoes, Convergence, Medusa’s Kitchen,
Rattlesnake Review, The Ophidian, WTF, Poetry Now, and
The Yolo Crow.
Patricia Hickerson Poems
MONIQUE
She could be your mother
but only for a shuttered afternoon
she could be lattice-work
framed for climbing moonflowers
their broad purple petals
alert in the dark
like her sky-wide eyes
shrewd with hurt
iced with brilliant intention
she could be a peacock
(the male perhaps)
spreading her tail
for a rainbow
or a warning:
there could be no gold
at the end of this journey—
but something close to it
SUMMER NIGHT SWIM
in the stone quarry flooded
you and I hot as July
shallow the moon glitter
toes paled, lips silvered
metallic glaze on a gushing plain
voices a net of echoes
ears silenced we leave the others
sink through the midnight pool
rocky nip of boulders
fevered jut of flesh
how we grow under the press of fingers
caress of dreams in a bowl of water
cool
lapping at arms and legs
your arms and legs
wrapping me at the flood
|
|
