Tag Archives: Elizabeth Hurst

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Below’

Leave a reply

What hovers above condenses below
And the vagus nerve has wonders to show:
Mill of the belly, invisible grind
Slick convolutions sculpt all they find
Smooth muscle contracts around traveling scat
As sensual as the yawn of a cat.
An abdominal chorus—how it gurgles!
Saturn’s own voice, corruptly fertile.
Cells split and shimmy, chromosomes boil
Identity settles, signed with a coil,

Written in meat’s salty alphabet.
Pulsing skin shimmers, scented and wet.
Eyeballs disguised writhe over a dream.
Our rubbery hearts, the genitals’ steam
Carbon dioxide’s vegetable tang
Ancient green song all vertebrates sang
Wet from the lick of valence’s tongue.
Leaping or lurching down star light’s descent
Trailing our dreams and our excrement.
From acids and stink the soul forges land:
Thoughts in our heads, and work in the hand.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “Below” was inspired by the concentration of nerves in our guts that functions as a second brain, the alchemical axiom “As above, so below” & “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement” from Yeats’s Crazy Jane poem.”

‘Below’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Body Fluid Cleanup Kit, bus, Colorado River Discovery, Page, Arizona, USA” by gruntzooki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘April’

2 Replies

I have to admire their heartless lust
Performing with no emotional fuss,
And when it’s done, no flower cares
That its lover still sprawls bare
To bees and wind, to hummingbirds.
Petals don’t worry if they’re the third
Or fourth—it just doesn’t matter
After they’ve spread pollen’s splatter.
They live to turn their airy tricks.
No rumpled sheets, no mess to fix,
No wet spots stuck to sated thighs
And stamens aren’t concerned with size
Or any of our skillful lies
Or hearts destroyed as sorrows rise.
No flower mourns when another dies.

*****

‘April’ was first published in Snakeskin… in March.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“April Flowers” by Jocey K is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Valentine’s Week: Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Hearts and Flowers’

Leave a reply

Genitals? They look like mouths
Splayed wide open to the south;
The backyard’s cool and scented tongues
Sing the lyrics of mud and dung.
They slobber pollen on the wind,
Obscenely, but without meat’s sin.
No lubricated pump and writhe
But floating leakage to contrive
Survival of their rooted kind,
Just letting loose to maybe find
Receptive innards gaping wide,
Exposing their perfumed insides
To dust from reproduction’s floor.
So why so sexy? Not called for
When all they need is neutral breeze
To engage in flowery sleaze
As one sweet self blows to another.
Most chaste of all the planet’s lovers
And we give them for Valentines
Along with silly little rhymes
To sanitize our sweaty humps,
And thickened fluids in a clump.
But all this grossness turns to joy:
The heart’s true love or blissful toy,
As sticky human lust conspires
To imitate the spring’s desires.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “This poem was inspired by the short California spring.”

‘Hearts and Flowers’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Lady Orchid” by anataman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.