Deflowering Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Into the valley of kings you led me,
Hot as a camel, ship of the sand-clop night,
Flickering ikon by ikon
Into the carnal centre of knowledge, old and new.
Black as the eye of Isis, your faithless head.

My love for you was amazing as the Amazon.
You were as base as lead.
A fir-tree nuptial canopy leant its prickly ear
To that first raw cry of pain.

In the rigging of the night,
The moon was snagged as the virgin blood slid down,
A strawberry trickle, along my milk-white thigh.
Your breath was cheap-cup whisky, farm boy.

How you gawked at my nakedness.
I might have been an insect in a lab.
I lay like the port of Venice,
My entrance wet and breached,
As you slid from me, the silvery moonlight dulled,
Turned dreich, turned drab. Sloughing me off like snakeskin...
Sloughing me off like sludge. Cleopatra on a slab.