Sex Sonnet I

An ekphrastic

After Carlos Latuff

In times of fascist barbarism,

joy is a revolutionary act (1)—

smeared across anarchist

red, her mouth vortexed

into a coming

insurrection between

her thighs a mouth,

between the mouth

incendiary wildness,

between the wildness

a molotov bursts—

motor oil at her seam,

fist in air, her riotous screams:

“¡Chúpame esta, facha!”

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(1) Translation by Ana Portnoy Brimmer of the title and text in Carlos Latuff’s 2019 art piece “Em tempos de barbárie fascista, gozar é um ato revolucionário!” [Back to poem]

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Mercurial

Oakland, CA, August 2021

After Faiz Ahmad Faiz, poet & political prisoner

My nipples are studded with salt crystals. You take them into your glass rim mouth. I trail a glittered cock over your lips, slip it between your thighs—you cum onto the sheets. I read you poetry of revolutions past. Revolt, pamphleted prison walls, occupied homeland, the delirious grief over countries and lovers. Faiz reassures that though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed in rooms where lovers are destined to meet, they cannot snuff out the moon, so today, nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed. (1) A wild hemp cigarette at your teeth, a joint fogging mine, mourning a waning movement, and a world where they’re needed in the first place. How intimate—rebellion and desire, we ponder, more so in verse. And the imperial insistence to extinguish them. The CIA’s paring knife; the Western blockade of barefaced politics, sentimentality; a continental insularity for books and barricades; imaginaries snuffed out—utopias doused. Your ebbing belief in the Left with a capital L, and what’s left of this country. My mercurial hope and fervid poetry. Still, tomorrow we’ll be cooking at mutual aid kitchens, paralyzing some six-lane highway. Tonight, the moon clenched between my legs, I’ll drip silver into your mouth, while you strap on and whisper how much you love my rabid lyric, frenetic sensibility.

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(1) Translation by Agha Shahid Ali. [Back to poem]

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ANA PORTNOY BRIMMER is a poet and organizer from Puerto Rico. To Love An Island, her debut poetry collection, was originally the winner of YesYes Books’ 2019 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest, and she's currently working on the Spanish edition (La Impresora, forthcoming). Ana is the winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest 2020, and was named one of Poets & Writers 2021 Debut Poets. She is the daughter of Mexican Jewish immigrants, resides in Puerto Rico, and finds hope in the poetics of dance parties and revolution.

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