Dirty Words – Candice L. Daquin

The party is in full force, women are lifting their skirts
turning ankles, kicking legs higher, swaying 
men are throwing back brandy, urging on, wiping damp
hands on the backs of chairs unseen.
Children who are supposed to be sleeping, watch
from the tops of stairs, for discarded drinks especially
those too sweet and yellowed with adult oxygen.
He’s outside in the garden somewhere
lips too red for a man’s, the repulsion of longing
like a razor cut.
Emboldened by the madness, she makes promises 
she knows she doesn’t want to keep, even in that
moment, intoxicated by the gaiety of the crowd
as if their swell has taken over the sea and caused
waves high enough to drown all sense.
He whispers dirty words in a hot mad gush
Touching her collar with sticky fingers
Drawing her close like an insect bisected with pin
Will resist the final push.
She’s running through unseen trees
Wild plumage releasing midnight
feeling with sore hands for their passage
longing to return to silence where the strings
affixed to her shoulders are slack and she can 
plunge headfirst into cold ocean
where the weight of water always helped her see
without correction. 

Photo by Fidel Fernando on Unsplash

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Born in Europe, Candice Louisa Daquin is of Sephardi French/ Egyptian descent. Daquin was the Publishing Director at the U.S. Embassy (London) before becoming a Psychotherapist. Daquin is Senior Editor at Indie Blu(e) Publishing, a feminist micro-press and Editorial Partner with Raw Earth Ink. She’s also Writer-in-Residence for Borderless Journal, Editor of Poetry & Art for The Pine Cone Review and Poetry Editor for Parcham Literary Magazine. Daquin’s own poetic work takes its form from the confessional women poets of the 20th century as well as queer authors writing from the 1950’s onward. Her career(s) teaching critical thinking and practicing as a psychotherapist have heavily influenced her writing. As a queer woman of mixed ethnicity and passionate feminist beliefs concerning equality, Daquin’s poetry is her body of evidence.