Tag: creative writing

Mother Angst

I am snow. Not real snow. I am too thick and fat and warm for that. But I am equally fickle, white, storm tossed, blinding. There are many just like me swirling in this orb. And who I love is this boy. He is so little, his smile almost too wide for the edges of the plane on which we live. He is a good boy, quiet and sad. I know that if I am not his mother I was meant to be. Still, his life is thin, will tear at a touch, and he will slip out of existence like a mirage of water. I will be left tumbling over strange faces who may have that sweet jaw line or wiry hair, but are not my son.

Memoir of a Rhinestone

Memoir of a Rhinestone

 

The light boils and boils within me.

I grin without skin

and color gushes out.

I was born in the dark and dirt.

Everyone around me was just like me.

Everyone around me knew they were special.

 

And some of us held onto that belief,

and I in my green translucency was not the least of them,

until buried in a wood of polished trees I saw

a green so pure,

so somber with the weight of effort and intention-

formed like a tooth of God,

and I felt my plastic disintegrate .

Diet Music

Diet Music

 

plays from the radio,

and my soul still picks daintily.

Is it afraid of getting fat?

So much that it usually eats

it has cut from its pallet.

Friends have been left in the cabinets,

community life in the

desolate freezer.

Color is calm,

though my soul still sneaks scoops

of pulsating shades at midnight.

What soul does not like a bit of electric blue

or Kelly Green

before running away with the dreams?

Perhaps my dreams,

shrinking beneath all my scrutiny,

cannot bear away

a more voluminous soul.

 

Bill of Rights

Amendment 1

The closet is sated. 600 pounds of clothes

nestle on shelves and in corners.

What have you said in the cunning tongues of cashmere and cotton

that you have not said with your strategic absences?

Be silent. Be naked. You have that right.

 

Amendment 2

Do you feel your fears nuzzle against your ribcage?

It’s time to extinguish the dark, you skittish lover.

You have the right to vacillate, but no right to time.

 

Amendment 3

Burgundy secrets slink behind the columns

in front of the house.

Do you smell something February and blue?

Follow your nose. It is your privilege to do so.

It is your power.

 

Amendment 4

The committee decided you don’t have a right to this right.

 

Amendment 5

 

Monitor the horses in Chincoteague.

Paint their hooves red, yellow, and blue.

Climb your ladder.

Watch art born.

It is your birthright.

 

 

Father and Daughter

Religion and faith

are best friends,

are enemies.

The law is a locket with His picture and

my neighbor’s picture inside.

I build cathedrals from beads and bubble gum.

I am a girl safe

in her Father’s arms,

dressed in silk and velvet,

diamonds at my throat.

He covers my war-torn wrists

in rubies.

 

The Art of the Body

Bodies so surreal

so intricately designed.

I adore bodies –

from the spare perfection of

thin bodies –

so small as to break at a harsh gaze,

to big, bountiful bodies with rolls and curves

everywhere all the time

I am consumed by the art of the body,

the elegant thin arm outstretched,

the belly a pillow to rest on.

Necks like flower stems and tree trunks –

hair brilliant, glossy petals.