Posts for June 8, 2022 (page 8)

You told the field on the flowers but
it already knew. Loss wakes you up
again. A barefoot city. A worksite
where you had no business.
A pillow where you had no sleep.
That a peony stem can sustain the weight
of its bright head helps you fathom
the addition of this latest wound
psychically blooming. There’s food
to think about. There are chickpeas
and turmeric. Black pepper and never
not salt. Look at your mind go.
A lone skier on a mountainside
cutting up the snow like a newspaper
for papier-mâché for a lantern
you never light up. Worse things.
Gather the little children of your thoughts
and get on your rocker. Get back
on. That can be the story for today.  

Coming around a curve in the trail,
I see your marred bark
a testament to delicate infatuations
spanning the years.

Why the need to carve
declarations into your trunk?

Perhaps, you are unfortunately located in
a space where inspiration to erect some
monument of the moment strikes
looking out at the lake, a postcard view,

and instead of rubbing hands over your
smooth bark, soaking in
those tender minutes,
breathing in the peace of green leaves
and lull of a bullfrog’s call,
they are driven

to cut into you
to leave a landmark bleeding sap
to claim you with their name
to claim their lover on your skin.

Once there was one, each following
must outdo the last,
leaving you tattooed in testimonies of
burning young desires
expressed in hearts and arrows and
names crisscrossing

hot as the sun sealing your wounds
fading faster than they can heal.

if i overlook what you
did, would you want me again?
or is that why you got so
bored of me in the first place?

is it childish to say
that you just checked out but
i did everything right?

tossed away like a
replaceable toy

how did you go
from loving
me to
this?

braiding memories
slow the singing

words
alone

A centto from the submissions of Karen George to date

I step lightly onto the grassland
and hear a crunch with each movement
as I tread the lawn of this cryptic society.
A thin layer of ice crystals has preserved
its sanctity.  The final words spoken
here:
          earth to earth
          ashes to ashes
          dust to dust
          in the sure and certain hope
          of the resurrection
I scrape a frosty film from the granite
of a lone stone tablet to expose his name
to the subtle light.  Its permanence shatters
my spirit, and I shed hot, bitter tears
at his forever abode, cold, lonely
my precious ten-year-old.

In a prayer Mama read
each night before sleep –
“If I should die
before I wake…”

My worst fear
not waking up.
No fear –
going to school.

-Sue Neufarth Howard

Loving our wayward daughter is riding the bus
through red lights at busy, unrhymed intersections
at ninety miles per hour and up, up, up
over a hill past broken-down Chevrolets,
veering into a dawn that unlocks the sun,
and past the wedding of automobile and deer,
of fist and face. Rubbernecking with reluctant eyes.  

Oh! acceleration the speed of love breaking
the sound barrier and all other barriers! Oh wife!
When listening to stars colliding, can you hear
the screaming and honking of the spheres?
Can you smell the way the rubber burns
as we speed, reckless, past rained-out ruins
speechless but for an alphabet of nerves?

nature’s task:

maintain ancient methods
of order and growth
that nurture
replenish
satiate

our task:

acknowledge dependence
and not hinder age-old systems
that sustain earth
regardless of our
short-perceived short-lived gains

Refusing to surrender

Leaving at the foam

Forming around the mouth

Spitting capital cases

But the words won’t come out

The loneliness swipes at

Reality, garnished of rain

Scraping off the miles

A child by another name

Another shot of cliche

Poet’s blood to the page

Bruised ink morale clasped

Paying for love on a

Last chance

Atomic bonding wielded

At the soul bone

I couldn’t get away from you

Without removing myself from

Olive skin and home

Codeine milk on lungs

Sinking deep

    With nothing left

   We love straight ahead

  For worst plans and better

Never going to surrender

sifts down from the ceiling
sneaks through glass doors
cascades from windows
long rooms fill with it
whole places swell with daylight

iron light       straw light
bright as brass       sun-yellow
corkscrews from skylights
gathers in the folds of uniforms
hard as marble       soft as lambswool
drifts in corners like snow
sleeps in shadows

light on every body falling
indifferent
animating
sanctifying

(from Jeff MacGregor, “Flesh, Blood, and Bronze,” Smithsonian, June 2022, p. 28)