Berlin Poems – Phyllis Konieczko

January 9, 2026

1.

Chinese Restaurant on the Ruins of Führerbunker

a.)
We missed noodles (takeaway).
The best time for kissing is yesterday and
the best place the sugared interior of a
sigh the best lighting none the best sauce soy.
On the menu you and me and on the ficus
benjamini tree a tired lady-bird with tired insect-
legs hugging pre-inhaled air you gazily caress each imploded
universe within the blackish beetle-spot and each exploded
brain upon the scarlet bug-wing-coat gauzily harass sweet
shimmers of animality maybe the bug is Eva Braun what
happens when a girl wants a girl more
than a girl wants to be wanted wet
end of a cigarette.

b.)
And yet I sit on you kobold-squatting
rheingold-sucking pretzel-knotted
plausibly desiring that is wanting ex-
haust you can go in now glazed
quartz of a sweat drop critical prose on
quaking underlip spongy mattress be-
neath a cramping leg and then, then the
blossoming of a red finger-tulip
between your thighs. This is why
a lesbian should always bite her fingernails.
A mother once killed her six children just
where we ordered food – the tightly woven
fibres of instinct, of affection, of imitation-
duck spiced with toddler’s souls and the
rattling breath of a dying daughter begin
to explain themselves. We long
like mocks of molecules.
Lubrication-bubbles sing
on my solar plexus with
the crisp voice of bursting poison pills;
fruit and empires fall when they’re ripe when oh when
will we fall heavy night never will she convince
sunrise instead pubic hair like bunch grass on the eastern front.
Selfless dumpling songs that are all my own. Your body as another day.
How spoon-curvature of you. So sensitive. So soup.

c.)
If all the mournful were given fortune cookies maybe the chewing
sounds would drown the rumination fading is exhausting so is being
gay have you ever they ask us here in this city have you
ever tried mdma and we ask how
do we author our next gentler birth teethy
kiss percussion and an even louder drum roll when you arrive in
my skeleton again what
shall we do with the some-
times forever
surely eat
it.

2.

Wedding

This space of spillage.
Bubble-gum swallow me bubble-
gum-stain my eye my cry
in pigeon-throat. And shadows
on the Späti-façade
black olives in god’s
great salad “Northern
suburbs” you girl
gap among the puppy-
poo that morning I
stopped texting you
gap girl between my
teeth ripped dental floss or
the after-taste of your tongue
are all the pavements here broad
enough to hold the ghosts
of dead communists un-
dreamed revolutions in
a constant state of arrested
development archive
sky dusty of me-
mories my daydreams driftwood
my inner lining mucous viscose;
Middle finger “shrubbery” waiting for your ring.
Phone silent.
My friend, my fag-tip-ash glowing
Into the almost.
So: like drool in a puddle let’s sing of fusion
like a beetle in battle let’s stick our legs into the
air like a dead mother’s eyes on a new
lover’s face let us be wet like
vodka in tomato juice biting and merciful
bloody marry me or ask me what comes
Next and I will say: “
I can’t believe you expect my lipstick to smudge