What We Carry
Odd webs in the corner of a pig barn.
Skipping cracks, hopscotching
towards the sidewalk’s end.
The restless pets of the forgotten
cemeteries that stalked us. Lotteries.
Electric patchwork golems, dark wolves,
the iron maiden of Joo, skinwalkers
of the witchery way, the unspoken words
of sailors in a crunched submarine
on the floor as the air slowly fades.
Babar, umbrellas, poems grown
mad and bone in the children’s
garden.
The stories that shaped us
fishhooked to our memory
forever.
6 thoughts on "What We Carry"
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Carefully crafted. And that last stanza drove it home. Well done!
Interesting poem! We do carry the stories we heard in childhood like skeletons in the closet.
The second stanza is extra spooky. Chilling.
I find the cemetery where my family is buried quiet and never spooky even in the dark of night…
I like “Lotteries” — how it pauses my eye and gives my mind time to name them all in my head.. “Fishhooked” is the perfect word.
Title invites me to cross the threshold to see what it is we do carry. Reading this poem aloud, highlights its highly rhythmic first stanza, transitions to a moderately-paced second stanza, and slows in the third and final stanza before closing on the final note “forever.” Vivid, haunting, and memorable, Bernard
“Babar, umbrellas, poems grown
mad and bone in the children’s
garden.”
Wow, chilling and beautifully chiselled.