Serendipitous clouds zipper the sky together, giving me celestial visions of a river, clear and lifeless, rowing its way to the bay I never returned from. The corset on my tongue is too tight. I must tell this story only with sentient and acceptable words. What if I told you there was a curse as old as the sea, and only a woman with a backbone of pearl can see the black shroud of the curse over other women’s heads? A woman is a swift and terrible thing. I am all dressed up in this blue sequin gown, and have nowhere to go. I need to be careful here. My corset is tightening. What I mean to say is the inglorious sunset and all the aquariums beneath was the real thing, and my best shot at something as furry as happiness.
Tag: Prose poem
Math I Can Smell
Roaring orange fantasies float like a triangle song (waltz) until they blend with the dawn. Crunchy consciences brace with brittleness for the coming judgment. “Today is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.” My rejoicing shaves off growths of fear bubbling out of my tired skin. He has to do that over and over, the dermatologist keeping me held above the flames. My mistakes cling to me like bacteria, multiplying. Math I can smell.
Invaded Empathy
The tide brings in a panorama of the future, a tableau of aliens celebrating our last tree. The forest in my mind is talkative. The chilling woods of my childhood beckons. Sometimes I walk away from my softened body, and float my personality like a pet balloon among the piercing stars. But on the shore of the land my great great great great great grandma tamed, an image of a metallic future of sleeping earth and invaded empathy.
My Body
My body is a soft petting zoo. My husband cleans his feral wife with kisses day after day. Wandering across the house, sailing over waves of pain, I search for my glowing glory. My body is a plush country of purpose. My breasts conceal secrets. Under his hands I feel my blood pulse to a spicy rhythm. My body is juicy like a 1990s waterbed, squeezing, bouncing, and always a little wet and tacky. He loves me when I bloom like a rose in the hothouse of seismic love he built for me with his gentle hands.
My Grandmother Was a Fish
My grandmother was a fish. Behind the iron bars of Memphis, she died slowly as my grandfather drained her blood to paint roses for his filthy lover. To me she was a wall made by the best mason, impossible to crack. Underneath, a heart poured out into a human sieve. The tragedy was she never said no. The bondage of the Southern Baptist woman, silent and sticky with secrets. She could have been in a condo in Florida with her little dog. Instead she swam in a tank in Memphis, her ocean of options breaking on someone else’s beach, and she dissipated into the vastness that is a God who sees every sacrifice.
Letter K
K is the wettest letter, black with red polka dots and wearing her sick yellow rain slicker. K dances the Charleston, and she pop,lock, and dropped it on my front yard with her pet penguin. K is a rose bush hugger – a brutal job, but she’s sharp enough to puncture back if she wants. Roses know she’s coming when they smell strawberry soda and old makeup. K will never lie to you – but she might omit a few key details. When is the end of the universe? She knows, but for your sake she won’t tell you.
Trash Collector
A mother’s fear – a sharp, wrinkled, black thing – shimmies and shimmers across the planes on the wind. My job is to collect the trash blowing across the mortal plane and refine it in fire. I take my grabber and carefully clutch her fear and jam it down into my designer trash bag. The epoch of sour cherry dreams is over. The hills have rolled away from us. Christ floats over the horizon, beckoning gently. I wonder whether the fire will refine her fear until it is fierce and returns to destroy her, or if it will refuse to burn.
The Inside of My Tears
Seeing through a window darkly, I observe a cloud killing his coolness and I say nothing. The last time I dropped a mirror I saw my essence in a myriad of fragments, and I wept. Cover the house in shrouds. I cannot narrate my life to this typist in a clown suit while seeing inside my tears.
Lame Shadows Limp
The lame shadows limp in the apricity of a well worn January afternoon. My after thoughts are too big for your seismic detectors. I sell seashells by the seashore, and you better believe I make a profit. Behind the green screen of life, a ghost of a woman with eroding teeth.
The Future
Bleached culture lies dormant in a vault under a rainy jungle. It is all I can do to say my polychromatic prayers and wish for lilacs. Soon I will bloom – like a volcano from the core of an enraged earth, furious to be far flung in a space time continuum that stretches and bulges hideously. Hiding in the trees, birds of hell and bats of burden. There is no cleaning up what was done in the brutal summer of civilization except in blood.
Miniature Moon 