Four poems in Levure Littéraire: To the Thanatos Within Me

Delighted to have four poems in Levure Littéraire. Thanks to Helene Cardona for including me! Here's one of them. Link to all four at http://levurelitteraire.com/larissa-shmailo/

TO THE THANATOS WITHIN ME

I embrace you, dear shadow,
my revelatory friend,
dear suicidal impulse; today
I dream of the parapets above
A la Vielle Russie, and
of splattering near the Plaza
where Woody Allen wooed young girls,
leaving a bit of me
on the Strand Bookstand,
near the park and the seals —
but this is too vibrant and real.

Better to find myself alone
in a porcelain tub
with chamomile bath oil
(as if I needed to be calm;
there is eternity for that),
listening to Verdi’s Requiem,
holding a razor,
or better still, to poison myself
with small scored rose pills,
avoiding arsenic and the Bovary traps
of indigestion, detection;
best with caplets, red carafes of wine,
or Guinness brew —
(who wouldn’t want to quaff a few?)

What catharsis there is
in the dive, the gesture, the infinite jest,
the slash, the brush (its own fire),
the dance with death?
Ah, this: as I flirt, you draw near,
chingon to my chingada
bite my ear, stop my breath—
who else could do that?

Dear friend of ferment,
who unearths the worms
that enrich this blissful human soil,
promising the end of eternal roil:
Te quiero, my Mescal, my absinthe,
my blue cyanosing corps, my Mayakovsky, my you. . .

Was this a mistake? Is it too late . . . ?
You bite my ear, take up my rear, whisper:
Yes.