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.
Tag: Prose poem
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.
Just the Right Universe
You are an old oak tree – I am but a swing designing patterns in the breeze from your strongest branch. The forest is alive with the yellow agreement of ants and the soft green buzz of bees. The sky wears blue like a badge of honor, but I saw it go to bed with a slatternly purple last night. Our child rocks on me. You support our weight. In another life you were a river, I a fishing pole languishing on an old man’s porch.
Burning Hymns
Dauntless, I descend into the dark wine cellar of human identity and its limits. If you wait for winter to find you, sleep will never come. Trees know this and draw winter up from their deep roots. This is an exchange. I am a reflection of shared maniacal vision, and the one burning hymns into my face with a magnifying glass is God.
What More Does Destiny Desire?
The white west wind knows me like a sister. I am a debutante among daffodils. I am an undulating plane of pretty, pastoral landscapes of Navy lakes and hereditary hillocks. Incensed by intergalactic incense, I find matter droll. The west wind wiles away the day with a crochet hook and a lighter. Opportunity doesn’t knock. It bites you in the back with fangs like a spider until you grab it and look into its avid eyes. My lakes have primordial women swimming in them. My hillocks are illicit and vast. What more does Destiny desire?
Miniature Moon 