The Tattooed Poets Project: Phebe Szatmari

Today's poem comes to us from Phebe Szatmari:

Sex should be like eating

Sex should be like eating

she told me last night.
Something that we just do—
which is exactly the opposite
from the way she touched me.

Magnetic electrical impulses
begin in my arm and shock like a current through
the hollow empty hull of a ship
that floats in the water

allowing the balance of buoyancy
that is the tugging of equal gravities,
those captured airs that will never stop trying to escape.
And yet release in my breath, on her neck

until another shock fills me again.
This is not like eating—
shocking with our hands, our lips,
carving down the spine, through the body.

Be sure to check out Phebe's lovely tattoo here.

Phebe Szatmari was working full-time in an office in Manhattan when she learned there was a shortage of poets. She immediately dropped everything and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook Southampton.

In her spare time, Phebe freelance edits, teaches writing, volunteers at LIGALY (Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Center), serves as a judge for teen poetry slams, and practices parkour. Her poems will be published in the forthcoming Writing Outside the Lines 2010 anthology.

Thanks to Phebe for sharing her poetry with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!