Rae Pater has three children and a dog called Bob. She spends far too much
time in front of a computer, and her bio needs some serious work.
Has published in:
Five print anthologies, Black Bear Review, Maxi's Review, The
Christchurch Press, and online at, WORDSPACE, MiPo, Ella, Tryst, Moondance,
Lotus Blooms, Mind Caviar, Blackmail Press, The Green Tricycle, Peshekee
River, Verse Libre, Erosha, and Poetic Voices. She also has work accepted
for upcoming publication in The Muse Apprentice Guild and Miller's
Pond.
Rae is currently studying English Lit. at Canterbury University.
Love Buttons
As our shadows love easily,
dusky limbs enmeshed,
we open each other's shy buttons.
Falter fingers
between rippled light
of silver-ringed new moons,
the floor a maze of brittle edges,
softened resolve peeled off among them.
We tip toe toward the center of each other
on a hopeful glimmer.
~ journey around my love ~
your name hovers on my closed eyelids always
a dark candle jewel
you are my polished sculpture
black arrows of hair
green leaves and orange blossom falling from your
starfilled mouth
could I climb inside
mill around
turn in a creamy cap of tooth
cavort naked on your tongue
soak in whispered promises
roll out across a brown glazed cheek
down your chest
the beating rhythm of my life
that holds my breath
in curled embrace
beneath the swarthy angel of your face
I place my fingers flat
upon the smooth cave of your center
and lower
encircle the pulse
of your desire
mylovemylovemylove
with every sweet and juicy tendril of you
pressed into me
my fingers seeking entrance to your back
your lips
god, your lips
opening doors all across me
sowing seeds of downfall
here and here and yes
here, yes
by Rae Pater
Nothing's Perfect
Of course I know
there's no real perfection.
Ever since that cock-up in the Garden of Eden
it's all just a crap game.
You roll the dice and hope for a pair
at the very least an even number.
Slowly learn
not to bet all your chips on one throw.
Snake eyes keep coming up
till you're lost in the wilderness
surrounded by thistles, clutching
the hand of some naked chick
who swears you got married in Vegas
but all you can remember
is snake eyes
crossed on greenest green.
You're a good sport so
you set up house anyway,
have a bunch of kids
two cars and a blender, and before you can say
banana smoothie
you're buried in debt. Living life by rote,
reaching for amusement at the end of a bottle
syringe/stray cunt/whatever
anything to kick up a little dust
in the eyes of the bastard that started it all
and your kids are out there killing each other.
One day you go to work
and just keep on driving,
drive until the concrete subsides.
The boxes trail off
and you see a little green,
a float of blue,
and you take the first big belly breath you have in years
beside a marquisette lake as the climax of the ay
melts confetti colours over the sky,
pouring down across black arrows of pine.
by Rae Pater
The Blossom of Night
Day folds her parasol
and night blossoms
into lavender lotus.
Kimisu lays her kimono
beside her futon
and floats in fragrant water
her limbs waxen-skinned magnolia petals.
Later she'll drink jasmine tea
in a porcelain bowl of moonlight
and read her lover's last letter again.
His words brushed on paper
like the winged roofs of the Shinto temple
curve up, in the cleanly executed arc
of a sword flashing on sunlight
before sending him into shade.
When her husband comes
her tears slip, unseen almonds
in dark circles on his black silk pajamas.
by Rae Pater
Word Lovers
My naked breast against your chest
trawls tight-nippled, your caress
I redefine the lines enshrined
within your words.
My silver tongue trips, flicks and twirls
in shady kisses
wound around
your naked thigh.
Who am I to bathe in bliss,
and yet I breathe
gentle mist,
across the tender plains of you.
My claims all staked
in clear warm light
undulating sweet and bright.
Initials
signed in blended inks,
stained on bone,
possessing every alphabetic letter,
every fingerprint,
bound to me with feather chains
of rose blushed air
imaginary.
Nothing you need ever fear.
Rae Pater
Goddess of Spiders
A frantic flutter at full stretch
doesn't free the fragile leg
clutched in a spider's strangle.
All evening, exhaustively,
the battle has raged
between free-range game
and fast food lunch,
mimicked by shadow twins on the ceiling.
I feel pressed to intervene.
It's so easy to play goddess
to such flimsy life,
and I'm a timely saviour
for a succulent victim.
I lift my finger
to snap the thread,
but the spider catches the side of my glance
with his pleading bones.
There will be other flies to save.
Rae Pater
Land Lovers
If I held to your lips
my half shell breast,
would you hear the sea,
with all the songs
hummed along the shore
and crooned in filmy swell's
sweet milky crests.
Would you open me like treasure
raided from the sand,
all golden grain and moonstone smooth,
a secret hoard of soft crab flesh
and starfish arms, discovered
in the folds of shadowed dunes.
I hold you deep inside me,
the marble heart of the ocean,
and all your secrets rise
in ruby coral blooms
I raise my pirate flag
and board your galleon again and again,
gold tooth flashing
and rainbow parrot squawking
ridiculous joy
Rae Pater
Hiding Seeking
As a bullet fired flash
I have searched for you
across vast vistas,
down snake winds of time
I have searched the fleas
on dogs and in children's ears,
seashell whispers,
and fractured bones
till finally I heard
your tin can giggle
in the crystal chain
of my DNA.
Rae Pater
The Sea Will Give Up Its Dead.
Shingled shoals swim the shore
turned beneath bare toes.
My legs veiled by a net of spray, I play
a necromantic tune
to summon the rolling thunderhead
over haunted steps of many dead.
Directed by the black silk bride
of Morpheus
a finger glide across a lyre
will bridge the drear unbent divide
of life to death.
The sea gives up with baby ripples
all the breaths therein expired.
The many-headed beastie's hoards
are forming in the foam and froth
expelled by the behemoth sea
my song returns them home to me.
Rae Pater
Green Dawn
i
Green shades many things.
Spring, with its skyrocket shoots,
regenerated under a gouda moon.
Each streak of spangled leaves
an ingenue,
momentarily upstaging stars
before sighing back to black.
ii
In a neo dawn a quasigod stirs
flesh coloured agar in a petri dish.
Counts cells, calculates margins
at five billion zygotes to creation -
a mathematical dilemma.
iii
If I could press myself
forever against you,
make an impression,
our skin would blend
in an epidermal cocktail.
Your godstick in my petri dish,
swirling primordial morning.
iv
My heart passed out of my body
inherited by my child,
a gold coin saved for tomorrow.
I tell him I love him
but he doesn't speak my dialect.
He thinks I'm saying:
Go, be free!
As if I would set my heart
on the road amidst the traffic.
V
The first joint of my forefinger
has a little swollen nub,
a mark passed
from my grandmother to me,
as though she reached back
and touched her print lightly to me
before she left.
vi
A quasigod grows a green heart in agar,
no grandmother for the fingerprint.
An epidermal cocktail of precious gold
spilled in traffic.
Rae Pater
