Poetry – Page 20 – swamp pink

Fade

December 10, 2019

I come nervous into the shop of soaking instruments & talc where I nod & drop into a mannish grunt Men & boys doubled in a wall of mirrors blunt my manner until I’m nearly mute He calls me to the chair above the coiled black jetsam gown dusted & whipped into the cleansing air...

Heart with Windows but No Doors by Nasser Rabah

December 10, 2019

1 He sang the song . . . remembered the tune completely. Died when skittering down non-ending streets like hopes, like darning garden’s air, pouring his spirit on the wall as rhymed dust. Confusing the details of a rose striving to remember his names. The singer died, the songs like marble tombstones. How...

Wraparound

December 10, 2019

I thought that if we let it go—the property—the daisy field—the dog’s small coffin—the osage orange tree—its second trunk—held up by wood stands— her seashell tumblers—their fixed gin—the bomb shelter forty concrete feet—beneath the ground—we’d be unlocked—no holding pattern—we’d know— reinvention—I thought in prying—open the framing— structure—less the brickwork—than the formal promise—the code untouched—the louver...

Modern Marriage and How to Bear It

December 10, 2019

“Of course the necessary moderation should be observed, as with all other good things, and club nights [for the husband] once or twice a week should suffice. On these occasions the wife can have a picnic dinner—always a joy to a woman—with a book propped up before her, can let herself go and let her...

Self-Portrait as a Man-Made Diamond

December 10, 2019

Your very own LifeGem diamond can be created from the carbon in cremation ashes, a lock of hair. —www.lifegem.com Transparency might be a virtue, especially where diamonds are concerned. But I am not a diamond yet. I could be burned in a pyre, release periodic bonds, post bail. Near nothing, I could be pressured into...

The Last Time I Took My Son To The Movies

We saw Wonder, the story of a boy named Auggie with a facial deformity caused by Treacher Collins Syndrome, who gets bullied until the other kids get used to his face and learn to see past it into his beautiful true self. My son started talking too loud. I knew his whole script: Our car...

Grief Box

You’re dead & you’re far away. Why log on at night. I wake up mid-conversation to a dream about a green house full of burning people. My favorite fact about trees is that they’re bigger underground.

What Becomes a Ghost?

No thickening of the air when met with last breath nor convulsive clutch toward some othered orphic veil— ……..This, I know with quartz- clear certainty. What of me will persist, then, after the long crawl, once artifacts of my being have been and been set into boxes, left curbside to dampen and molder to ash...

The Shed

In our dreams we return to the shed, the outer wall studded with antique tools like punctuation: a scythe, an ice pick, a plane. Weapons of the dead. The door stammered: I need to bruise you. The windmills were still in the tornado field. In my dreams I am running my hand over peonies. In...

Portrait of My Father as the Trojan Horse

Say father, father & listen for war. Stay quiet and listen for a drum beat, the same as the heart of war. The breath of men is a reckless sound that splinters in the throat. Dad drinks a little then a little more, and I wait and I wait. When the Greeks leave they leave...

The Child Speaks by Liliana Maria Ursu

tears down his cheeks then onto the paper meant to capture spring. When asked about his parents, he blurts: “At night mother washes the stars and during the day clothes for two families. Evenings she irons out words, to unwrinkle them. And father, father puts lipsticks on fish at the market so they’re always fresh.”

Self-Portrait as Milk Hare in Active Shooter Alert

We plan our escape from our basement classroom. My students share memories of school shooter drills. I share what police advise—run. Trees blush and undress, but the scratching outside our window is not the dead we fear to be. Today in the news I read rediscovered stories collected by Irish schoolchildren of household medicine and...