Poets Wear Prada: Bob Quatrone | The Rape of the Queen

Submission Policy

Submissions to THE BUG BOOK are now closed. However, we will continue to post a sampling of poems accepted for the anthology as we continue to work our way through the flood of last minute submissions.

Poetry (any form or style) and Micro or Flash Fictions wanted for an anthology on SMOKE. Not just the black clouds rising from the five-alarm fire next door, or the billowing plumes of smoke warning us of a forest fire, or the emissions from factory smoke stacks, apartment house incinerators, and crematoriums, smoke rings rise from cigarettes, smoke pours out of headshops, pipe shops & cigar stores--see that purple haze rising over the fields of poppies and marijuana we just planted--we've used it to communicate via smoke signals and skywriting, to cover our tracks and disappear with and without mirrors, combat the enemy on and off the battlefield, kill bugs, flavor food, cure illness, declare peace treaties, and fragrance our homes. Got the idea? Release it onto the page.

Guidelines: Submit up to three poems/micro fictions or two flash fictions at a time with a fascinating bio of 35 words or less, not just limited to publication credits, copy/pasted in the body of an e-mail (no attachments, please) to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com. We will also entertain up to six one-liners or 2 short stand up routines at time. Previously published work is OK as long as authors have retained the copyright, which will be returned to them after publication. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If your work is accepted elsewhere, and you still have obtained rights to republish, just let us know where and we'll be happy to acknowledge the other publication.

If you do not receive a response from us within a month of your submission considered it rejected and feel free to submit again. Due to the volume of submissions we cannot respond to each and every individual submission. Selection for the on-line edition are made on a ongoing basis as we receive your submissions. However, final selections for the print edition will made after the October 31st deadline. (In otherwords not everything that made the cut for the online edition will appear in print.) Please do not query. When in doubt, send the submission to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Bob Quatrone | The Rape of the Queen

THE RAPE OF THE QUEEN

You are the one

I am all lust for you savage and unholy queen

I am all lust for your round and bonneted bottom

I know not what the gods had in mind

when they made you such a furry and corseted delight

Though I slave in the galleys among the wretched workers

I am all lust for those recesses my stinger would love to enter

Tell me my queen when will you favor me among all the unfortunate

I have buzzed my brawny back on endless nights but we all know

You can only choose one, only one can have the infinite delight

Of all your treacherous words for we have been taught

From early in your schools that only one can be enfolded

In the steep thrilling sanctum of the hive, that only one

Is somehow turned after you have peppered our fractious bums

With stings of orgiastic pleasure too deep for any to comprehend

But by the profoundest osmosis of your Queenly female will

We the skunk-like workers may at last emerge as drones

Worthy to p--k your highness into happiness

I know you Queen Bee and your raucous female proclivities

I have observed how you have been long upon the couch taking the pokes of all your gallant studs

Each waxing more glassy-eyed than the last, stumbling out into the lonely precincts of the hive

In noxious dreams of affluence and power, the devilish proboscis of each worked totally into silly

Exhaustion, poisoned nearly to death with your love and pleasure

And though I clearly see the fate of each of these stuffed and potted drones

I can in no way resist the same lusting after you, the same pining for your treasures

Of doom and devastation

Yet another drone has passed in a state of near collapse down the sulfurous corridor

But we are all breathless with anticipation as again your highness roams

The galleys looking for who shall next merit her condescension

Her extraordinary vituperative embrace, let it be me queen, let it be me

I am ready to pound your wild bottom for love and splendor

I shall have you screaming shamelessly in the night

My little stinger inserted all, all the way up, even into your Queenly snout

Perhaps I shall do what no little f------g bee has ever done

Give you the final f-----g night of your life Queen Bee and make you squeal out

Secrets you have never thought and can never undo once they are done

At the command of my holy rod

So you see queen bee, even the most lowly of your workers

Keeps verily the possibility that one day you shall be undone

By the mastery of a good working class f--k

and no amount of royal repentance or remorse will ever undo it

The hive on that day will buzz no more

All the bees will have finally been set free

To go find their own honies in the world of flowers

By Bob Quatrone

Bob Quatrone graduated from Columbia College in 1965 and was Woodrow Wilson Fellow in 1967. He served as Program Host and Director for the Walt Whitman Poetry Society during the mid-1980's. He was a featured poet for the St. Mark's Poetry Project in 1997. He currently hosts The 4 Horsemen Reading at The Cornelia Street Cafe in New York City and lives in New Jersey.