Posts for June 1, 2016

We’re saying goodbye
And I guess it’s fine.
Defeated, I am tired of begging for love.
My truck and I stay stuck stalling
Twice weekly in your shared drive way. 
We’re waiting for you to move.

From the open car window,
You look relaxed with my departure.
Playfully unzipping my sweater,
Some singular sexualized affection.
But the zipper snags my skin
And I cry out “God damnit”
And watch your face change 
To something that feels like a wall.
And you say “You’re so quick to go there”

And all that I am is nothing
But an immediate reaction.
It isn’t pretty. 
We both know my mouth isn’t yours.
Constantly aware of my singularity,
We are both digusted that I am not you.
It would be a relief to say 
That I don’t understand
the point of art.

Samantha Ratcliffe 

We’re saying goodbye
And I guess it’s fine.
Defeated, I am tired of begging for love.
My truck and I stay stuck stalling
Twice weekly in your shared drive way. 
We’re waiting for you to move.

From the open car window,
You look relaxed with my departure.
Playfully unzipping my sweater,
Some singular sexualized affection.
But the zipper snags my skin
And I cry out “God damnit”
And watch your face change 
To something that feels like a wall.
And you say “You’re so quick to go there”

And all that I am is nothing
But an immediate reaction.
It isn’t pretty. 
We both know my mouth isn’t yours.
Constantly aware of my singularity,
We are both digusted that I am not you.
It would be a relief to say 
That I don’t understand
the point of art.

Samantha Ratcliffe 

The driveway splits
the field in two.
On the right,
red and white cows
trot and bellow
after new calves.
On the left,
a hawk darts
away from a
war party of robins.
It carries 
a large rabbit
in its claws,
struggling to keep
its hold.
I am carefully 
edging this path
between new creation
and total destruction.

 – Jessica Swafford   

Water falls in pure-white allegro formations
Dancing in sunlight,
Inscribing a perfect circle 
On the fountain’s small pond,
As holy, as soul-nurturing
As any Eucharistic wafer 
Ever hoped to be,

While overhead, 
A single white cloud,
Suspended in crystal blue clarity,
Casts its narrow shadow, 
Into the center,
Whispers,
The way a wine-dipped wafer does,

Here!
In all this sunlight,
Dance!

Jonel Sallee

Could I be forgiven
For the escalated expectations
That come from waiting?
Planning the perfect moment, pretending
To forget my things inside
I’m much too exacting for that
Bullshitting with the printer whose toner is changed
With the frequency of an undergrad’s major

I could be forgiven
That this would be also…
Major that is, not minor
That’s reserved for the answers you give
Which makes the word “vague” feel
Insecure and lazy
Not that I am, not exactly
I could be forgiven for reading too much
Into your beguiling, hard-nosed glare
I do read too much though

I hope I’ll be forgiven
For the insecurity at least, but it isn’t
Laziness to expect a response
What is lazy is not making
The effort
To move your borrowed book onto
The desk, the counter, the bed
Where you won’t end up either
Ultimately too much effort
But if you make the first
I’ll fall in line
I’m nothing if not an expert
Re-gifter

…maybe I’m lazy after all

                          –       For B.

I missed you today, even as I found you—
fragments left hiding along shores like the shells
of Orlando.  I walked where you were, but not when
you were, or near where you were—I’m not
sure—can’t be sure.  I’m not even sure
how long you once were—there—in the sands
of your birth, before Kentucky, before Texas,
before I could read words or hear the soft chime
of your voice—light and life
swimming deeper, breathy tones
in the whisper of fragile
husks of ocean life.

                                    And then you were gone,
just as Florida is gone, yet living
out of sight, in my past, like the pulse
of purloined things, brighter things,
constant things, drifting things
like thunder and rain
in the nights of fleeing,
fleeting glimpses
of gold against
gray, against
blue-tinged
black

star-strewn skies.

I missed you today, but I still find you
intoxicating, even in your absence, even
in the possibility that powder-pale soles
pressed the sand I once pressed
moments ago, decades ago,
in the beginning
of a world

where deep called to deep
but was separated

for the blasphemy of knowing
the brief nature of distance.

Leaving the fabric store,
she stoops with the weight
of unmade clothes in a white plastic bag.
I watch from my car,
parked at Good Foods Coop
across the wide street.

I read sorrow in her shoulders
that bend to manage
her ballooning bag in the breeze.
I give her thoughts: “What kind of world
doesn’t have a fabric store,
for crying out loud?”
“What do I do now?”

Later I remember
her aggrieved elbows
and give her thoughts
in different colors:
“I always hated that old place.
Hated sewing.
And it just kept getting worse,
all those fake fabrics
and chintzy geegaws that broke
if you looked at them.
Good riddance.
Maybe I won’t have to sew any more
after I finish these last things.
I wish I hadn’t even bought this old mess.”

Whatever her thoughts, I want her to know
what Cheryl Truman wrote in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
I want her to know about GAG:
“The nation’s Hancock Fabrics stores
are holding going-out-of-business sales,
according to a news release
issued by the Great American Group, an asset-disposition company. 
‘Now, our task will be
discounting all of the merchandise in the stores
until it is completely liquidated,’
said Scott Carpenter,
president of the Great American
retail solutions division.
‘Loyal customers and the general public
will be able to shop in the stores
and receive significant savings
on a wide variety of quality merchandise,
just in time
for their prom and bridal purchases.'”

I send the loyal customer a thought balloon:
Great American Group invites you
to keep your disposition as you—a Great American yourself—
take part in the Hancock Fabrics retail solution.
Please liquidate your loyalty,
if you don’t mind,
now that you have helped GAG sell every last asset,
every stitch of discounted quality merchandise.
Have fun at prom and enjoy the wedding.

The estate is dark,
the hallways empty.
Your shadows
around corners
are false idols
I cannot smash;
I would have to keep
more pieces of you.
Your echoes break
like tides
against the walls.
The moonlight–
fractured, fleeting prisms–
are the only footsteps.

In a series of collisions
her cousin, his daughter, by marriage
arrives in Lake Forest wearing
the same shirt as the groom
in this aren’t we humble moment
squinting in the water’s glare
someone brings chickens, of course
beer and music everyone likes
Gerbers in pots, she is here
dances almost every song
keeps near the air pockets
the clover and wild violets
rend and drill her in the end
head bent by the loss
here on the eve
of all new beginnings

There is lightning in the high clouds to the north,
but distance cancels the thunder. The
flashes reach me, but the cycle is
incomplete.  

The sky turns darker, eclipses the healing
moon and stars.  

I am the first emigre, the first immigrant
woman. I leave as a stranger, I arrive the
same. With no husband, no sons, the cycle
is incomplete.  

The clouds roll closer. The air cools and
turns electric.  

My daughters and I speak our only language,
and are damned. We eat the only food we
know, and we are cursed. We would belong
but the cycle is incomplete.  

The distance closes. Thunder makes the
children turn in their sleep.  

My labor is required, but undervalued. My
wisdom is needed but not sought. Our
bodies are desired, then discarded. The
cycle is incomplete.  

Silence drops, is suddenly carried away by a
thousand fingers drumming.  

The rain falls, warm and soft, carrying hope
and salvation, but the ground is hard. The
promise is rejected, flows in gutters. The
cycle is incomplete.