Strange and Potent Mixture

Blue in Detroit

2012-03-01T14:52:00.000-05:00

Blue is patches of sky, hovering over

Detroit at the cusp of fall, hung by God

for a people hungry for wider living

and open spaces, not this crumbling

concrete and burnt out houses across the street

from the elementary school playground.

That blue will become a polluted orange-pink,

a strange beauty that’ll make your eyes water

and fill you with longing for familiarity,

not this city of strangers who never loved me.

I’m not seeking pity.

I’m telling you how blue sinks into my belly—

Coltrane’s blue, starting slow as train wheels,

chugging along until it drives full steam, taking me

back in my mind home to Alabama, to a girlhood

that no longer exists except in melodies and riffs.

Blue is a pretty word people use when they don’t know

how it feels to spend another insomniac night

staring at a knife, just in case you can’t

wake to another grey day of dying.

When I tell them I can’t take another twenty-four hours,

they prescribe more pills and raise the dose.

It’s no coincidence that the pills are blue

and pink and yellow and white, the colors of sweet candy,

but tasting metallic like a razor blade or blood.

Every morning, I hold those pills in the palm of my hand

and consider the irony: how insane my sanity is

tiny and crushable and housed in small

plastic bottles I throw away every month.

Cheer up, they tell me, which is just another way

to say: You’re nottrying hard enough.

But they’ve never carefully split

the skin alongside a blue vein,

barely missing the pulse.

That scar marks my wrist, reminds me

I’m still alive and I have a choice

that can’t be distilled to cliché.

One day at a time? I’m taking it word by word,

writing this poem while looking out

my window at a patch of blue sky in Detroit.

I’ve been trying for two decades to determine

the difference between living and dying,

and most days there is none.

When they ask—

Are you going to hurt yourself?—

I can honestly say I never know if I’m lying

or not when I tell them—

no.

But blue is just another word I’m writing

to survive another few seconds, while waiting

for that polluted sunset and then that grey dawn,

reminding me how the difference between

living and dying comes in shades of blue

and the exact measure of how much

sky I can see from my window today.

For D'Verse Poets

Victoria Hernandez Dances

2012-02-14T06:50:00.000-05:00

They say I never dance

at school assemblies—all the boys

wearing pressed and tucked shirts

and the girls, their hair pinned back

with clips and bows. But they don’t know

I dance with her in unlit spaces.

Under the bleachers in the corner,

she takes my hand and twirls me around,

embraces my waist with her thin, dark arms,

and silently dips me backwards.

Her body becomes a comma, and my heart,

sound flooding my ears, pauses when

she pulls my body so close to hers,

then steps away, and I breathe

the Salsa beats again, watch her hips sway,

a primal music pulsing in my veins.

She burns deep,

deeper in my belly.

And no one knows

how our love is beats

and melodies and doesn’t need

to speak or be seen.

You never dance,they say. But I do.

I dance and dance and dance.

I want a poem

2011-05-03T05:25:00.000-04:00

I wanna poem to tell me

it’ll be okay.

I want a poem to say

all the stray words

stuck in my throat.

I want to toke on it, roll

the bits into thin paper, light

the end, and inhale long.

Yeah, I want a strong antidote

of meter and rhyme, telling me

this time hopelessness is just

a long word for lost faith.

So gimme a poem.

Show me how the grey expanse

gives way to cerulean.

Give me words I can chew,

metaphors I can swallow,

images I can drink.

Cover me with a blanket

crocheted with rhyme.

I need the measure of poetry,

to rid me of this stilted, prose life.

I’m holding a blade to my neck,

and that’s not a metaphor.

So please, gimme a poem.

©Ami Mattison

Awakening

2011-04-30T19:40:00.000-04:00

Some nights when I’m half-asleep,

I hear Mama’s voice say my name.

Other times, it’s Daddy, calling out.

I awake, half-expecting to find

myself again in the back yard, hiding

behind the overgrown honeysuckle

intertwined and clinging to chain-link.

Mama holds open the kitchen door.

Or Daddy unlatches the fence gate.

And I, a half-wild child, emerge,

long dark hair tangled with burrs,

palms and knees stained red with clay.

II.

I want to say these are memories

but they may be hallucinations.

I’m uncertain about the difference,

just as I was uncertain where I was

when I awakened from a book,

one or the other saying my name

harshly: Your granddaddy is talking to you.

Papa’s voice, I don’t remember.

Only his decrepit hands, flashbacks

to the laundry room or the storage shed

where he lured me with the promise

of puppies and leeched my girlhood instead.

III.

Sundays, Mama cooked deep-fried chicken

collard greens, field peas, and cornbread.

These smells could be memories or dreams.

Sometimes, I awaken at night, craving

a full belly, sleep-walk to the kitchen,

awaken to find it dark, empty, and useless.

IV.

You need to come home, Daddy says,

his voice cracking over the phone.

Come home, Mama says, half-asking

half-telling me what I should do.

But home is twenty-seven years ago,

and I’ve been departing ever since.

I’m a memory to them. They’ve hung a ghost-

portrait of four-year-old me over the mantle,

a kind of memorial to the child who never returned.

When I’m visiting, sometimes I get lost in that girl—

remember the blue barrette clipping her dark hair

to one side, the indigo dress she wore for Easter—

until I awaken to my reflection in the curved glass,

startled by the stranger I’ve become.

Tonight, I sat in a field of wildflowers

lacing the stems and weeds into a wreath.

The river runs just north of the field

and the old bridge where I once balanced

along the broken planks is still there.

I left the field, flowers crowning my head,

and I balanced again upon the bridge,

trying to get to the other side.

Come back, they call to me.

And I awaken, sit up in bed, wildflowers

falling from my hair. I am half-wild

and smelling of earth and honeysuckle.

I rise and run to them.

I'm Hungry

2011-04-28T23:28:00.000-04:00

The coffee maker

and microwave died.

The oven is treacherous.

I haven’t washed dishes

in four months.

I have one pot, one spoon, and one knife

I use over and over again.

I’m subsisting on peanut butter

sandwiches and cold canned food.

My stomach won’t stop growling.

Sometimes, I wake at night, eating

my bed sheets.

For G-Man's Flash Friday 55

When We Are Onions

2011-04-27T17:04:00.001-04:00

If you pull back

the layers, toss them

aside, you’ll find nothing

at the center.

It’s a joke.

And it makes you cry.

Some people need

the pieces to be

symmetrical, but me,

I just chop and chop

into sloppy bits.

It’s for the taste anyway.

Not that I would eat one raw.

But in Georgia during summer

sliced Vidalias and fresh tomatoes

appear on supper plates.

But both of those are side dishes,

and this is about the center

of it, which can’t be located.

What lies between us could be

a field or a river or just a dusty

country road.

But instead, it’s complicated and striated

and so abstract that I have no idea

what I’m talking about.

Still, I have to say, this not-knowing

a thing is what makes mothers weep

and lovers sigh.

It’s potent.

Kinda like those kitchen fumes

that make eyes tear up

even when there’s nothing

particularly sad.

At the center of us goes unnamed,

not really nothing or a thing,

but a no-thing.

But then, I have no idea

what I’m talking about.

Photo courtesy of DRB62

Privilege

2011-04-26T22:53:00.000-04:00

The crux of our middle-

class lives folds into every day

items, puzzle blocks we buy when

some of the pieces are missing. So much

depends on the picture of necessity,

desire and the pieces

we accumulate: cars, furniture, appliances,

collections of what we need

and what we want, fitted into

wooden frames and bricks, mortared

into homes we own. How lovely

those drapes are and that landscape

hanging on the wall. The precise

measurements of how we live

depends upon what’s missing

from the painting. Cars, furniture,

appliances, the stuff of what

we pay for, counting our gains,

our losses, wanting

to balance the ledger

of who we are and what

we believe we deserve.

Revival

2011-04-25T23:57:00.000-04:00

I cut my wrist with an Exacto blade,

made an incision to bilge the blue vein

so I might see my blood, reassure myself

it was pulsing.

When the wound bled wet and red,

I wrapped it tight with a kitchen cloth,

guarded my sleep throughout the night,

and swore never again to come so close

to killing.

The cutting was a bad experiment.

But how else might I feel the aching,

except to excise it from beneath my skin?

How else to recount and atone for my sins,

except to slay myself for God?

They told me I needed better coping

skills and meds, but really the bleeding

was enough to engulf the anguish

and flood my veins with vital signs

of living again.

Marking my skin, the scar is now

as thin as that blade, drawing a line

between dying and survival, reminding me

revival is as close as my wrist.

Absent-minded

2011-04-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

Death is not a reality, but the absence of a reality. ~Thomas Merton

They say I’m not dead yet,

but surely this is hell.

Not the inferno they preach,

but a sterile hallway, narrow

and lengthening beyond

my poor eyesight.

They say at the end of it,

there is light, but I’ve been there

and I can tell you, it’s a white wall

decorated with an oil-painted face

of God, hung to remind me of his absence,

how even he’s abandoned this place.

They tell me it’s Autumn.

So the ginkgos must be dressed in dying

leaves, baring branches as spindly

and useless as my bony limbs.

Who cares about the senseless seasons?

Only those who want to believe

there’s a reason to live past Winter

need the consolation of renewal.

Me, I’m waiting for tardy death

and wanting them to cover the damn window

so the sun stops mocking dawn and dusk

and finally shrivels the husk of belief in hours

and days, finally sheds the pretense of light.

They say dying is the absence of living,

but I can tell you it’s merely relief

from the illusions of concrete

things, like these brick walls and

this joke of a windowed view.

So, I sit here counting on absent-

minded death, hoping it too

has not abandoned me, wanting

that welcomed embrace when finally,

finally I become nothing.

Jesus Weeps

2011-04-22T07:34:00.001-04:00

How many times I died

I lost count. With every plea,

I gave a piece of me.

Water into wine, men’s madness

cast upon swine—miracles

emerged from flesh,

blood, tooth, bone.

She was the only one

who loved me.

I died a thousand deaths,

was reborn when she kissed

my feet with her hair.

Stars on Alabama

2011-04-20T16:52:00.000-04:00

We lived our little drama.

We kissed in a field of white.

And stars fell on Alabama last night. ~Mitchell Paris

Oh, those stars over Alabama.

How they fell in tender light

upon the fields of soft,

white buds, plucked

by your dark, scarred fingers

to show me the stubborn

seeds nestled there.

How the moon creases

the ochre sky tonight,

how I can taste red clay

in the cracks of my lips

takes me back to you,

to your dim room where

your mama’s quilt dressed

your sentimental bed,

and the smell of scotch

and weed wafted

like your fingers along my skin.

We slow-danced the blues,

and our lips pressed together

kept the secret between us:

How you could’ve been hanged for birth

and I could’ve been burned for love.

But we never spoke of this, only met

as the quad tower tolled the library’s closing—

you, gunning your daddy’s red Ford and me,

breathless and laughing, running to catch up.

You drove us to that field, gave me

something soft, and then hard-pressed

between your naked hands, I shuddered

white stars in a black sky.

Remember this, I whispered.

I’ll remember this, you said.

And you cradled my head in your neck,

chewed on a blade of grass while I inhaled

the woods of you, and we both just let it be,

let it all go without words.

Flickr photo courtesy of Katie Harbath

Ridin' the Blue Train

2011-04-20T07:29:00.002-04:00

Better catch that steel-wheeled ride

‘fore it takes off and slides on down

those tracks ‘cuz it’s a one way ticket,

and there ain’t no goin’ back.

Jump that rail and don’t tell Mama

cuz she don’t ‘bide by rattlin’ rooms

and shakin’ hips, but baby that song makes

you move in all the right ways of wrong.

And I’ll take back all dem days I lived

‘fore you cuz ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do

to swing you once ‘round the floor.

Gonna throw open all the doors so folks

can flock inside and heat up this joint,

pass it ‘round, so cool, so hot.

I got five dollars in my pocket, just enough

for a shot of juice. So, you can break loose,

lift that skirt just enough to see yo’ knees

and laugh when I beg please for more.

Hear that horn, baby, feel that thump.

Trane’s got a riff just for you and me.

He cooks that beat ‘til all you can do

is snap yo’ fingers and nod yo’ head.

Everyone said the man was goin’ places

but the only place I wanna go

is a straight-shot towards your South,

yo’ Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana too.

We’ll ride this blue train beneath the moon,

the tall pines runnin’ alongside and stars

burstin’ into white heat like my heart.

Take my hand, baby, and let’s fling

ourselves into this black night, show ‘em

how it’s done when the wheels slow down

and the bass is just right. The two of us

spinning like old vinyl ‘til the music stops.

And we scratch a powerful itch ‘til

the needle drops, and we ride

that train again.

Easy as her silence is

2011-04-19T14:16:00.000-04:00

No one knows that she talks

to me, spills her days in lovely

chatter-songs that wake me

every morning and bed me at night.

With others, silence marks her

as aloof or elusive or even enigmatic,

but she’s not really a question.

More a comma, a pause

when she crooks her neck

slightly to the left, weighing

what to say and decides to say

nothing.

Why fill silence with words when

it isn’t empty of meaning? She asks

for the curve of my inner ear

its fine vibrating bones, not my poetry.

Which makes me uncertain until

she smiles, leans in and mouths my name,

its vowels and open sounds.

They say her native language is written to mimic

the mouth in speech. How to open the lips

and where to put the tongue are half-lines

and circles, illustrating human sounds.

Her voice brushes my skin, soft

as breath, quiet as a heartbeat,

and this is how I hear her.

After Her

2011-04-18T06:08:00.000-04:00

I am underground where the roots

of trimmed conifers strangle water from clay

and daylight filters through half-drawn window blinds,

still dusty with the lives of strangers. My grey face

reflected in that window becomes gaunt and ghosted.

Outside the cinderblock walls, ambulances

and fire trucks streak towards the hospital

or away. Red flashes light up the night and whining

sirens wrench my dreams into deafening wails.

I burrow here in this basement along 13 Mile Road,

a short stretch between life and death, and die

each afternoon only to wake again to black mornings.

Friends send wreaths of flowers, propped

against the door, leave plastic-wrapped casseroles

with small notes of condolences. Everything rots

with love.

I wonder sometimes if God resides in the dim

light bulb that hangs from my ceiling, and whether

I might come closer to heaven if I noose myself there.

But I am too sad, even for staged dying

and instead I improvise living, listen to jazz,

mark my days by etching lines in notebook paper,

connecting them with curves until poetry covers

the blank space, and I feel written.

Later I will chisel this into stone, leave

this place, and go home.

©Ami Mattison

Photo courtesy of howzey

When we are gods

2011-04-16T23:56:00.002-04:00

the terrible eye turned into

a vertical slit, squinting

at the straight, neat lines of who

we believe we are.

hard dark crossbars above us and below us.

I, I , I, we chant.

Ami Mattison

If They Knew

2011-04-15T22:25:00.001-04:00

The wide-eyed moon lights

winter’s midnight sky.

One word changes the season,

the hour, the shape of the moon.

You cannot say, it’s cold.

You must let the cardinal, clinging

to a bare branch outside a frost-

kissed window tell them the freeze

is almost over.

And you cannot speak of love at all.

Certainly, not heartbreak.

Instead, you must settle for how

the cardinal always flies away,

how the moon recedes in daylight.

If they knew they wouldn’t ask
how long a poem takes. A half-hour

becomes a decade when you’re

rapt by the words formed on her lips.

If they only knew, they wouldn’t ask.

Who wants to know how you pull

words from your jaw, raw and flesh-ridden.

Who wants to know how everything

is always about her anyway.

Certainly, not me, gazing out

into the uncertain dawn.

Yes, least of all me, abandoned now

by the cardinal and the moon.

Domestic Disturbance

2011-04-14T21:31:00.000-04:00

Upstairs neighbors are at it again.

Stomping, thrown objects, and loud

thuds shake my ceiling.

Get out! Get out of here! She screams.

But he won’t leave, not until he’s taken

a piece of the wall and her with him.

Later the ceiling will shake again

headboard thumping, bed springs

creaking so many terrible moans.

For G-Man's Flash Friday 55

Photo Courtesy of Grand Velas Riviera Maya

If you want it to burn

2011-04-13T17:43:00.000-04:00

Gather the thin, fragile lies, slipping

from her lips, like dry twigs fallen

beneath low-lying branches.

Strike flint against the bone

of your bitterness. Set aflame

the recanted kindling and blow

hot breath across the splintered

wood, seasoned with mistrust.

Stoke it with your anger and watch the fire

burn steadily down to cold and dying embers.

Place the ashes on your head, smear

them across your lips, so you might

remember her kiss.

Plague

2011-04-12T21:50:00.000-04:00

My blackened shroud

Burns to ash, wind-blown

Across deserts

And oceans

It summons a plague of rats

Gnawing on marrow and grief

Ami Mattison

A Shadorma for One Stop Poetry's Monday Form

Of Miracles

2011-04-11T15:41:00.001-04:00

Commuting cars along 13 Mile Road
sound like the rush of the ocean waves,
tumbling at low tide, and I am taken
to the seashore where you combed
for shelled treasures and washed them
in wet salt. Your bare feet awash
in the surf, you bowed your head
to the sun.

Time never curls back, and I will never
again stand on the edge of the world
between earth and ocean nor burn
beneath your radiance, your smile,
curving and lifted when you look at me.

I am land-locked now, living in a crummy
basement, bereft of sun and sky and you,
wrapping daylight around my dank nights.

My grief wanders there into early morning,
stands in the middle of the road and looks up
towards blackness.

I do not believe in miracles or accidents,*
only the star, perhaps a planet, peeking
through a sudden parting of clouds

and the swerving car, horn sounding long,
wheels braking hard, but too hurried to stop.
I watch the tail lights fade into the distance,
return to my basement where I sleep hard
and do not dream of seashores.

Ami Mattison

* Excerpt by Sylvia Plath

Touchdown Jesus

2011-04-09T18:52:00.001-04:00

Lightning struck Jesus, a stone bust

ascending from a fountain of faith

along I-75 in Ohio. His arms, six stories

high and stretching towards heaven,

he was a joke among locals. He suffered

eighteen-wheeler exhaust and finger-pointing.

His pleading expression was immoveable

until God’s jagged fire set him aflame

and burned him to the ground.

Solid Rock churchgoers were undaunted

in their belief, took the burning as God’s way

of saying they needed a new Jesus, this one

standing, full-figured, his arms outstretched

again towards God and begging to be spared

from natural disasters.

The resurrection took place on a bright autumn day.

Folks parked, pulled out grills and set up chairs.

Ate popcorn and prayed God would bless them

for their devotion with lives as large as Jesus.

The Moon's Eyelid

2011-04-08T23:27:00.002-04:00

They have been speaking

for years, telling her who

she is and what she should do.

Mostly, she ignores them.

The new doctor asks

if she has a superpower

the doctor should be aware of.

She tells the doctor: The moon’s eyelid

is wide open tonight. I can see that much.

The doctor nods, makes a note in the chart.

62 year old white female

suffers from schizophrenia disorder.

She decides not to tell the doctor

she can see the words before

the doctor writes them.

Words are all she has

and she uses them carefully.

Do you have any medical complaints? The doctor asks.

Which is a trick question.

Last year, when she stepped on a nail,

she went to the emergency room

and told them her foot was hurting

so bad she couldn’t walk on it.

They wrote in her chart:

Patient suffers from the delusion

that she can’t walk.

She pulled the nail out herself,

sucked the wound, dressed it

and limped for a month.

Just because they can’t understand her

they think she’s crazy. And it’s true

she has a penchant for creating new words,

and she prefers her own language to theirs.

Patient is incoherent and speaks gibberish

despite no finding of neurological problems.

This new doctor is nice enough, pretty.

She can tell the doctor cares. But she’s had enough;

so when the doctor leaves and before the nurse returns,

she pilfers the papers. But doesn’t even bother to hide them

under her gown. That’s how much they don’t pay attention.

Later, she chuckles when she hears the doctor

asking the nurse about her chart.

The nurse is distressed, knows she’s in trouble:

It wasn’t in the room; so I thought you took it with you.

The nurse’s whining makes her cackle louder.

The night body flings itself into the burning fire, she guffaws

and slaps her thigh.

When they show up, they find the remains

of her chart under her pillow. She’d left it there

during her nap, after she’d scattered the papers

around the white room.

They gather each sheet, gnawed

and wet with spittle, the ink bled

words no longer decipherable.

Mrs. Woods, did you do this? The doctor asks.

I was hungry, she replies, her smile stained black.

Okay. The doctor says, hesistantly.

The doctor leaves the room, the mess

of papers pressed to her chest.

And she giggles some more.

The moon’s eyelid is wide open, she sings.

Wide open, wide open. I can see that much.

A Mother's Lament

2011-04-07T22:48:00.000-04:00

Light bulbs blew in room after room

while the houseplants withered and

died. I closed the window blinds

against the summer sun.

But I couldn’t block out the sounds

of the neighbors’ children. Their squealing

laughter interrupted my mid-day sleep,

and the high-pitched peals shattered

my glass dreams of holding tight

your small, live body.

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

Photo courtesy of cheishichiyo

Inevitable

2011-04-06T22:17:00.002-04:00

I cleave to winter, unready

for the rains, washing away

all traces of the seasons we witnessed

together. My unclean palms pressed

in prayer, I am penitent, mumbling

offerings to the gods for second chances,

redemption from the ghost-bones of grief.

I cannot bear how time moves

from then to now to now and now,

how the melt follows the freeze,

how the purple tulips spring

from our abandoned garden, blooming

despite neglect, how this beauty hurts

my eyes, squinting into sudden sunlight.

But we are not flowers, wintered-over,

nor the inevitable greenish buds, pushing

up through tree bark. We are not

the dead grass that will green again

only to die and green again once more.

No, we are wet as common garden mud, stuck

or cracking and turning to grit. We are borne

on the winds and carried across an ocean,

where we once emerged, salty and breathing

painful air into nascent lungs. And we are

the breath before dying.

Late Winter, Detroit

2011-04-02T09:12:00.003-04:00

Robins return

before spring

wraps warmth

around the city

the cold core

of abandoned fealty

thaws to mud

softens with songs

schoolchildren play

hoops and holler

in fenced spaces

across the street

from burnt husks

of buildings no longer

meant for living

here we inhale

exhaust and longing

for the strange

orange dusk

the cusp of day

the sleeves

of overwintered

sweaters come

undone at seams

are shed

shells washed

up by the polluted

river where we wade

wet as dawn

and listen

for those songs

the birds bring

with them the thaw

comes slowly

slipping in overslept

visions of vitality

our ears perk up

awakened by trills

and chirps

we change

water into wine

and divine

intervention

leave-taking what

we can no longer

believe of gods

we cleave

to the swell

of robin’s breasts

restless in our waking

pulling back

the pitch black

dead chill

and calling

like baby birds

open-mouthed

hungry for warm-

nested living.

Photo courtesy of Andreas Trepte

diverted

2011-04-01T04:00:00.005-04:00

she’s high
on too much

coffee

too many

cigarettes

and no sleep

hands hard-wired

to the steering

wheel, she

accelerates

rounds

the mountain

curve

wonders

what if

she took

the metal barrier

with her

highway signs

promise:

Hot

Boiled

Peanuts

Now

she brakes

scatters

roadside

gravel

buys peanuts

sucks hard

on wet shells

her grief

Photo courtesy of Natalie Maynor

Disquieted

2011-03-28T06:50:00.000-04:00

The women who love me

tread upon my sleep

and I am awakened

by their coming

one by one, visiting my living

room, arranging themselves

upon furniture, dropping their luggage

and backpacks meant for staying.

“We’ve come for you,” one says.

But we go nowhere together.

Instead, they fan out around my house,

take up residence in my bed,

rattle pans in my kitchen,

dust the houseplants.

I am wanted yet wanting

for what they want from me.

I make love to the boldest,

make conversation with the shyest,

dance with those who stand in corners.

And yet not one takes me

with her.

I suckle at a breast that becomes

suddenly another’s breast.

I tongue the familiar lips

of a stranger. I am

fed, bedded, and plumped

by so many more than I could ever

possibly appease.

I name and tremble before each one

so she might kiss

my cheek, stroke her hands

upon my oiled hair, say my name

as if she means it, and whisper

her divine demand in my scarlet ear.

Then, I run. I mean,

I flee as I am meant

for leaving, and no one

follows.

How It Happens

2011-03-27T07:37:00.001-04:00

A part is not the whole,

but apart from it and merely

a part. The glass filament

is not glass though it reflects

light just the same.

When under a microscope,

the thin thread is a Great Lake shore

in winter when the waves want

for warmth and yet do not freeze,

reflecting the sun upon glassy surfaces

but not sun itself.

Motion is constant until

it is not, just as the body’s live

stillness requires the movement

of muscle, stretching and contracting

a syncopation of that living instrument

until it stops its singing.

Glass filaments break when

knitted to bind the broad cloth

of our living.

Tension, bending, and friction

must happen at the same time,

for if they are singular actions

then the thread merely stretches,

bends, creates heat,

and a stitch.

But when all the forces happen

in a single moment, the filament

finally fractures against God’s palm.

I am satisfied with my conclusions:

You strained towards the northern sky,

and I towards the southern coast.

In concert, we looped and pulled tight

those pained strings, bending them

until the heat caught fire and ravaged

what bound our bodies.

Simultaneously, we broke.

Now, under the microscope

we are icy waves and identical

in appearance and composition.

I am a part and you are a part

and we are apart from one another.

Neither of us is

whole.

For One Stop Poetry's Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge

Photo courtesy of Roger Allen Baut

Truce

2011-03-25T04:00:00.000-04:00

An exhaled pause that could

stretch into a week or even years,

a jittery finger on the trigger,

or uneasy as a flag, flapping a single wing,

the color of clouds painted upon a blue canvas.

We might talk or we might

seethe.

It all depends

upon the lungs, its inhale

and what is expelled.

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

Photo courtesy of portobeseno

Autobiography of Deconstructed Me

2011-03-24T05:58:00.000-04:00

Me, circa 1965

was

was is

was is born

was is born colored

was is born colored named white

was is born colored named white born adopted

was is born colored named white born adopted born girl

was is born colored named white born adopted born girl became am

was is born named became am

is born named became am

born named became am

named became am

became am

was I

is I

born I

colored I

named I

white I

adopted I

girl I

became I

am I

I am

For Big Tent Poetry

*This poem was prompted by the Cut-Up Machine at Language is a Virus. The original sentence is "In 1965, I was born a colored girl, adopted by white parents."

War

2011-03-23T03:35:00.000-04:00

War

War is the sword we love to live and die for.

War is the lord we pray to kill and fight for.

War is the why we don’t wanna know now.

War is the bind of proud vengeance, its bloody vow.

War.

Want me some war.

Gotta have me some war.

Come on, let’s war.

War is the corpse we sever in apathy.

War is us dead, feeling no empathy.

War is the drug that numbs the raging beast.

War is a drunk who needs just one more drink.

War.

Want me some war.

Come on, let’s war.

Let’s war some more.

War is the paying others, servants for our dirty deeds.

War is the slaying others we see but never really see.

War is us working, like cogs in oiled machines.

War is us dying, like dogs on busy streets.

War is us pervertin’ love into hate.

War is we’re so certain we hold the only faith.

War ‘cause we need death to feel unholy pleasure.

War, you know you love it, cock the trigger, shoot your terror.

War

is the historical culmination of a profound lack of imagination.

Or more often, a refusal to demand any other options

because we are too busy breaking our backs

to feed our bellies and our children.

Or preoccupied by, which car,

the black SUV or the red SUV

will I buy to drive while fantasizing

about the importance of my daily life,

when half a world away and down the streets

infants die

from man-made famines and a lack

of medical supplies made purposefully scarce.

Mothers smack

their blood-smeared palms

against the chests of their rotting children.

Fathers drink

from mad revenge for the deaths

of desperate sons who throw rocks

at tanks.

And daughters pray for their own graves

when cold, dead blades are shoved

between their thighs, pried open

by cold, dying hands.

Don’t tell me we hate this

‘cause if we did,

we’d be rioting in the streets right now

and we’re not.

There’d be no war right now

and there is.

Don’t tell me we didn’t know

‘cause deep down

we know

we knew.

Don’t tell me we can do nothing

‘cause they are us,

and they can do nothing

without us.

America,

slumber on.

Dream your self-righteous superiority.

Feed your hunger for fat-free salvation.

Settle your guilt on the couch in front of the TV screen.

America,

close tight your eyelids, plug up your ears, and open your wallet

‘cause there’s a war raging, baby,

you signed and paid for.

War.

Yeah, wage a war.

Let’s kill for war.

Let’s die some more.

War.

For One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

November's Child

2011-03-16T04:39:00.000-04:00

When you spilled out of me,

the trees were shedding reds and gold,

baring their heads before the gods.

They took you from my naked

arms, bending down as autumn limbs

towards dropped, round fruit.

II.

You perfected me, completed form,

not sketched in lines as I am now.

Do you remember me?

Once, you were sound,

and I was breath. Unspoken

forgotten poem, I am half-thought.

III.

Forgive me this love, clichéd

and grasping mother love.

Forgive these desperate hands.

Forgive I do not know your name.

IV.

When darkness drifts upon my bones, splayed out

in semblance of a life, I sometimes shed this loss.

When I’m half awake and restless tossed,

you call for me to wander beneath autumn trees

where you unfold into those reds and gold.

I am soaked and naked Hail Mary

upon my lips. I say your name.

Your lips kiss my shame, and I

bend to you.

For One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

Photo Courtesy of Cape Cod Cyclist

Purple Dusk

2011-03-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

She tended to her African violets, a jeweled
setting of amethyst among emerald leaves.

Clay pots placed just so in the living room, one

in the kitchen window. When the sun brightened

in summer, she moved them to darker spaces,

pinched the dying petals, and they bloomed

with wild abandon as if sprung from the rich, black soil

of the mother continent, still undiscovered by white hands.

She died while mowing the weeds in her back yard.

I inherited one plant. Overwatered, it died too.

I couldn’t accept it wasn’t thirsty as she always was,

sipping iced tea from a sweating glass. The colored

crystal reminded me of the sea where she waded once,

letting the froth cover her red-painted toenails and varicose veins.

I tried to save the violets, set them beneath the carport.

Before they rotted, a single, three-winged weed appeared

in the fertile soil, and the violets bloomed purple dusk again,

renewed and reluctant, stubborn, not yet ready to die.

For Magpie 57

Photo by Tess Kincaid

How to Make a Trophy

2011-03-11T06:08:00.000-05:00

Take a child. Call it

a girl. Show her the confines

of your expectations. Expect
the world from her.

Next, color her to perfection.

Paint her lips, dress her in pink.

Now, rend her body

to the fragments

of your desire.

Finally, pour her

into a golden mold.

Every once in awhile,

dust her off.

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

It Ain't Over

2011-03-06T05:49:00.001-05:00

*My "narrative prose poem" for today's prompt morphed into flash fiction. Thanks to all the one-stoppers who indulge me and take the time to read!

Officially, it was the wiring. But really it was that black, bitter, backstage boil we call coffee, and I never would have spilled it on the frazzled light cord, its spliced rubber casing revealing live wires, if it weren't for Giselle who makes me nervous even when I look at her from the scaffolding above. When she dances, removes one shimmering cloth to reveal a dark thigh and then another to uncover her breasts overflowing from a robin’s egg blue bra adorned with sequins, I come undone, shaking and shimmering like one of her veils—the silvery orange one, flame-colored, heated as my face. And this time I spilled over like my coffee which first just sizzled on the wiring some and tricked out the spotlight, as it winked on and then off and then dimmed and finally dramatically cut just as Gisele cast off her last veil and the audience clapped an unknowing irony.

Some call it Cabaret, but Catherine, the artistic director, calls it Theatre. I call it a part-time job. I still blame Nick for not taping that cord. I mean, what good is a tech director who doesn't keep up with the details. And I’m only there for “experience” and “love of the craft” and admittedly Gisele. But hell, without me to fetch and run for everyone, the show wouldn't go on because Nick wouldn't have me to yell at, and Victoria who’s admittedly overweight would probably still be pitching a fit about not having fresh donuts, Perrier, and throat spray. And Gisele would never get that dress zipped up, and Stanwyck wouldn't be able to run his lines on that monologue he’s done for over a year now and who’d have caught Merrick’s damn birds, which fly to the rafters on a regular basis? As I see it, I’m the glue, the scotch tape, and the bent nail keeping this show together; so maybe it’s appropriate that I’m responsible for it coming apart.

If Nick or at least Catherine had checked that fire extinguisher, then maybe disaster could have been averted. I mean, when Catherine was finishing her introduction for Victoria’s act, I tried to put out the flames, but what can you do with a dead fire extinguisher, but yell “Fire!” and run like hell. And after the audience laughed, and I darted on stage and yelled it again, everyone with any sense ran too—jumped the rows, trampled on their dates, and stampeded towards the exits. I could only think of Gisele, and how I had to make sure everyone in the dressing room would safely escape. So, I was still running around backstage when the curtain caught fire and billowed those flames all over the stage, and it was fast becoming clear that I was the only one left in the theatre, except for Victoria. Why she was still standing center stage among the flames, hitting that high note, when the scaffolding finally fell, I have no idea.

Everyone was accounted for on the street, and most of us stood and watched the firefighters drench the building. I was crying and shaking and gagged on my own guilty tears flooding my throat, so distraught that even Nick, not knowing, was like, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” And all the other women who were crying too started hugging and kissing me, and then Gisele dried her tears like a real pro, pulled herself together, patted me on my back and said, “Honey, let’s get you a cup of coffee.”

Photo courtesy of Jacob F. Lucas

For One Stop Poetry's Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge

I clocked my days

2011-03-03T23:47:00.001-05:00

I clocked my days with long

pulls from the bottle, each swallow

another second spent on bleary-eyed

yesterdays. I recounted sad,

sad stories, fondling them

as prayer beads, and mumbled lines

of poetry I’d never live

to write. I liked the drunken measure.

Reveled in despair because

the one art I could master

was anguish.

Dusk

2011-03-03T03:44:00.000-05:00

The sun will not be with us

much longer. The earth turns

our faces towards the suspended

moon—its distance, proof

of how bound we are to molten core.

The sun stays and we move,

a planetary revolution, and yet

the sun seems to betray our longing

for light and warmth.

We believe ourselves abandoned.

How simple is faith when sun

colors the horizon, moves

across the expanse, measuring

the hours and each breath.

What sorrow is faith, when even

the moon and stars fail to appear,

and we are exiled to night,

the broadcloth of our grief.

Pity us.

Our puny effort

to bend the light,

to rend the darkness.

Our belief in the body’s discipline and not

the perfection of corpuscles

we neither created nor deserved.

How small we are,

How futile our lives, grieving

the sun, when tomorrow

it will rise.

Flickr photo courtesy of Boris SV

Intersection

2011-03-02T03:34:00.000-05:00

What separates us are painted

lines, drawn across thick asphalt.

You, standing on a street corner,

your hunger held between both hands

and scrawled across cardboard.

Me, sitting in a car I can’t afford,

listening to NPR, waiting for

the traffic light to change.

Moving coordinates on the map,

we sometimes collide like this—

our paths intersecting along the roadway.

II.

What separates us

is a short distance between curbs—

the paved road I’m driving and

the graveled space beneath

the underpass where you sit.

That I might hunger food is unlikely

upon this road where you sometimes live

and work the corners.

I possess what is cast from the mold

from which I emerged, wanting

for neither food nor shelter,

neither clothes nor shoes.

My hunger is relative.

A need for more than the paltry sum

of being alive and surviving, it is bent

to the shape of my shame for breathing

in and out and still living.

III.

What separates us is my car’s glass window,

through which we observe one another,

not unfriendly or friendly in our mutual gaze,

but a casual assessment of the other.

You are hungry,

and I am hunger.

We are close enough to speak,

but we don’t.

Flickr photo courtesy of zen

For One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

Eating Eden

2011-03-01T08:21:00.000-05:00

Use your thumbnail to splice

the dimpled skin. Peel away

canary-colored pieces, the soft

white feathered bitterness beneath.

Bite the sour fruit.

Let the juices drip down your chin.

Smack your greedy lips. Spit

the seeds. Eat until it burns

the open cuts of your cuticles.

Feign innocence, and never

admit your forked desire

for blood and lust,

that first bite,

how you do not regret knowing now.

Photo by Tess Kincaid

For Magpie 55

Let There Be

2011-02-24T20:28:00.001-05:00

Let there be darkness so I might sleep

beneath the dead distant stars, their slow light

navigating this leaking wreck

so I might believe in solid ground.

Let there be land at dawn so I might love

the rot and lay upon it.

Let there be.

Let there be some refuge there.

Flickr photo courtesy of Libertinus

For G-Man's Friday Flash 55

Dying Leaves

2011-02-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

The dying leaves

lie in dense drifts

across the fenced space behind my home.

Summer’s last refuge, the green grass

pokes out from beneath the decomposition.

Soon, the grass blades will die like the leaves,

and winter’s glacial coat will cover

the hibernating ground.

The snow always reminds me of innocence,

while the half-alive leaves, shed from guilty trees,

is evidence of too much living.

Falling and wind-blown, the leaves mark time.

Each one is a minute or an hour or perhaps a day,

counting down the moments towards death.

In Autumn, the leaves seem a waste.

Clumped together in piles or scattered about

by the wind, they paint a blurry image

of some vague, yet regrettable loss.

Through my window, I see the naked

and unabashed trees flaunt their bare limbs.

Heavy with dying, their leaves

lie listless upon the earth.

I am the shed leaves—scattered evidence

of the tree’s former living. Each fragment shapes

my dying and the regret of not living.

And I am the greedy, abandoned tree,

counting its losses as necessary,

relinquishing its dressing,

one stitch at a time,

in single, shredded pieces.

I do not die then.

Instead, I shed my own living

to withstand the dormant winter;

so in springtime I might dig my roots

deeper into soil and rock and rot,

grow larger,

become fed

by the fertile death

of my leaves.

Lips Lungs Tongue

2011-02-23T01:51:00.000-05:00

Lips, lungs, tongue.

I’m smoking a cigarette outside the airport terminal,

when it raises its head, curls, then snakes

its way to my inner ear, settles there,

sounding soft and sanctimonious:

You make a living

from your lips,

your lungs,

and your tongue.

I hadn’t thought this thought this way before:

my lips

my lungs

my tongue.

Everything hinges on my body parts, moving,

working as involuntary gestures, or at least

the way I will them, and I’m smoking

a cigarette, outside the airport

in white, cold Michigan.

II.

If you can call it irony, it doesn’t escape

the mental recesses where my inner cynic resides,

but resounds there, reverbing,

like a childhood taunt that won’t shut up:

You’re stupid!

I’m smoking a cigarette, addicted

to dying in small fragments,

tiny fractions of time,

and the way I pay my rent

is to peddle my lips,

my lungs, and my tongue

to anyone with spare coins and a microphone.

I’ve tried other occupations, and they suck.

So honestly, I don’t even need a microphone.

Just the cash, and a room of my own

where I can smoke and write poetry.

Call me a hypocrite, but outside the airport terminal

I refused to drop the cigarette. Even as I thought

to quit the habit, I pulled a final drag

from the carcinogenic tip and lit

another one.

III.

Contrary to popular belief,

dying isn’t the opposite of living.

Killing is the opposite of living.

Whether you’re killing yourself or someone else,

whether you’re cutting an artery or

shooting the guts of an enemy,

you might be breathing,

but you ain’t living.

This isn’t an anti-killing poem, I promise.

I believe a little killing is necessary,

I believe in killing in moderation,

killing in self-defense,

killing to eat,

killing so I can sleep better at night, feeling safer,

because, while I personally am doing no killing,

killing is happening so I can live

without thinking about killing.

IV.

Lips.

Lungs.

Tongue.

Sometimes, I lie,

obscure the facts,

omit the details,

just so I can convey the truth.

Sometimes, I stand in a crowd of strangers

and recite poetry with a kind of certainty and predictability

that suggests I’ve rehearsed every gesture,

memorized each line, honed

the presentation of poetic verse.

I want to give it to you:

Hard, then soft.

It’s a living—

a way of breathing by holding my breath,

a way of seething and out-talking death.

People have died for less than poetry.

And is poetry worth killing for?

Lips.

Lungs.

Tongue.

I’ve got to quit smoking.

Flickr photo courtesy of Lanier67

For One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

On the church steps in downtown Nashville, 2004

2011-02-22T00:42:00.013-05:00

Listen to audio version

We put on a show.

Yelled, real loud, top-of-our-lungs rhyme

for the folks drinking five-dollar coffees

at the Starbucks across the street.

Minton suggested the church steps,

even though they didn’t say we could.

What they gonna do? Arrest us?

She shrugged one shoulder, wagged

her hand, then performed

a little ditty about war.

Ross ranted against revenge,

Kelly recited a poem about denial, and

me, I did an impersonation of a capitalist.

One guy in a business suit

shook his fist at us, yelled

a curse we couldn’t hear.

He wouldn’t cross the street,

say it to our faces. So we waved

like beauty queens

in an independence day parade,

smiling to the crowd. Hey, y’all!

When the police cruised by,

Sonia was playing her guitar like a punk

rock star, screeching metal strings

and singing a less than flattering song

about the president of the United States of America.

The preacher finally showed up,

wearing his Sunday collar, waited politely

while we hollered some more.

When we were tired and hoarse

the preacher politely suggested

we ask for permission next time.

Forgiveness is easier.

We cackled and cracked jokes

all the way down the sidewalks

of downtown Nashville. Had ourselves

a real good time.

Flickr photo courtesy of bmitd67

Undertow

2011-02-21T02:51:00.000-05:00

Bottle slung against my parched lips,

deep-throated swallow, there’s a hollow

space behind my blood-shot vision.

I’m on my knees, worshipping

a toilet where my liquid guts

get flushed like yesterday

or last month. I can’t remember.

In the hallway, I stumble, fall hard

knock my teeth against floorboards.

My naked legs splayed, my naked arms splayed,

my belly wrenches and heaves spit.

Even the gods have abandoned me

lost among the half-thoughts, littering my brain.

How to unfurl this aching fist, how to quit

punching the brick-face of this tomb.

The lid closes like my eyes,

slides slowly shut, light receding

to a single slit, then darkness.

The gods say we are powerless to the pull,

the wet undertow that churns

the brown, brackish sea where open-mouthed

we gulp and swallow and gulp and swallow

until we are spat out with seaweed

and other drowned things.

A storm breaks upon my face.

Remorse is wet

and I am soaked in it.

Later, I will sleep it off again,

and wake to the liquid pull and drift,

shelled shard of a bottle

poised against my wrist.

Flicker photo courtesy of Sister72

For Jingle Poetry Potluck

The Earth Hums

2011-02-20T03:09:00.001-05:00

The earth hums,

and scientists can’t explain it--

the high decibel keening,

a planet’s symphonic singing,

unheard by human ears but only

by delicate instruments, measuring

spherical noise.

The earth hums from molten

core shifting or oceans drifting

or atmospheric pressure or the measure

of the sun’s rays careening across

a breathing planet.

The earth hums, an opera

of life and tragedy, the lamentation

of that final note, held and suspended until

hearts break and circular grief engulfs

a rapt audience.

The earth hums, and there is no

silence on this planet.

Gnash your teeth and weep for it,

a cymbal’s riff, crashing across

eardrums and unlit space, resounding

the earth’s pulse.

Solipsistic Regrets for Jennifer

2011-02-19T07:15:00.000-05:00

Me, 1990

Today's challenge from One Stop Poetry is to dust off an old poem that celebrates and begins to speak to our origins as poets. Here's my offering with a commentary that follows.

I.

These days

I stomp on pain-staking ground

shifting beneath my feet

crumbling under my sole and you

stumble over my disturbances

and me:

Because

heel ball toe

I dance alone in darkness

to the beat of remembered tongues

speaking lips words unspoken downcast eyes

for fear of seeing and unseeing

a child hurt and told

not to move because

He says so.

Because

She sat and sits there still

a dark live thing bone in hand

pressed by a will too big to escape

the press the prod her body's surrender

to a hand feeling and unfeeling

the sun's beat against her back

her squint for turned heads

in fear of remembering hands and un-remembering

hands before they touch

un-being because

she must exist to hurt.

Because

Night like mercy came and comes

a veil to cover myself to express

my mad dance my breaking

of old ground beneath bare feet

before summer.

I speak by heart

an unpracticed passage written

by remembered hands on my body

and forced performance

to choke on furious fingers

remembered and stuck

in my mouth down my throat

told to suck and take

in dirt between flesh and thumbnail

like exacting measures of poison

for the healing I half-believed.

Because

I hesitate in darkness, listening

for the unremembered sound of my flowing blood

and alert to false echoes like a howling dog

bemoaning a pitch imperceptible to the human ear

yet howling still

alone.

II.

These days

I do not want to be

alone and still

I hurt you .

because I am frightened by your unspeakable shadowy form

because I am an unremembered ghost

because I am sorry for my pain

because I am mad with desire to touch the space of myself in you

because I need myself these days.

Jennifer

because I desire broad daylight to dance

with you on ground made new

by the together of our feet,

these days, still

I am asking for second chances

to be to love

myself and more

to offer you

in return.

Ami R. Mattison

July, 1991

On “Solipsistic Regrets”

This poem is my earliest surviving poem, previous ones having been tossed, burned or perhaps tucked away in the forgotten remains of my past.

With the exception of re-formatting the font, I’ve left this poem exactly as I’ve found it. The elder poet in me begs to “fix” it. At this early stage in my career, I had no clue about line breaks or punctuation, much less an understanding about how to use words to their best effect. So, it remains as is, a reminder that I began somewhere else and fortunately have greatly improved.

I was 25 years old when I wrote this poem to my first girlfriend. It was towards the end of our 5 year relationship, and we were breaking up. I wrote this as a way to explain how the events of our break-up were triggering old scripts of violation and abandonment in my life.

When I titled this poem, I’m pretty certain that I had just learned about ‘solipsism’ or the theory that the self is the only reality. And I remember I felt that the word suited my sense of how I’d become caught in a morass of my past and how my memories of it had suddenly become my present reality.

This poem was the first time that I ever wrote about my history of childhood sexual abuse.

But what I remember most vividly about this poem is how I felt keenly that there was no other way to speak of my experiences except through poetry. A letter, a conversation, or a story wouldn’t do. Only poetry could possibly begin to tell of these experiences from my past; only poetry could speak how I felt in that moment when I wrote this poem.

It was a powerful lesson: poetry is necessary; it speaks for us when nothing else can.

Unspoken Word

2011-02-15T18:21:00.001-05:00

As a child I spoke when spoken to,

learned my place as children often do

and stayed there,

a still and silent thing, the picture

of assigned perfection, a portrait

of good-little-girl obedience, painted

by the refined strokes of the bible belt

across my back.

By adolescence, my mouth was a tight fist

where words were folded,

like my fingers to my palms,

an arsenal of unloaded weapons.

I sucked

the intentional hand, seeking to shut up my mouth

or extract words, like teeth.

I chewed my nails ragged,

swallowed the dead remains

and fed on silence to stave the threat of violence

and its dark premonitions.

Fear found fodder and took root

in the damp and toxic dump

of broken meanings, cast off words,

and useless verbs,

a heap

of what wasn’t said,

my funeral bed

of hot and smothered shame,

and every time I failed to claim

the air and muscle to speak my name,

I died another suicide.

Death was a bad habit.

II.

Your silence will not protect you, the poet said.*

Instead, two possibilities exist:

the risk of speaking one’s mind

or the small and petty deaths that over time

wreak tragedy.

In other words,

there is no middle road.

There’s no half-way to say: “No!”

No, I will not shut up.

No, you will not beat up the verbs

that emerge from my throat.

No, I refuse to choke

on unspoken words.

III.

As I cut my wisdom teeth,

I gnawed the bone of my own fear and grief

and dared to speak, as if words would save me,

which is why I’m speaking to you now,

as if somehow you will hear me,

mouthing what you cannot speak, to say:

Your silence betrayed me.

You believed your indecision was benign.

You walked ahead, left me behind,

remained silent, as if blinded by the violent onslaught

of human flesh, aimed and launched at me, the easy mark,

as if you were deaf to the words, slurred

to name and shame me.

I do not blame you

for what you could not do then.

But your unforgivable sin is

you refuse to speak of it now,

and somehow, you do not see me,

even as you examine my face, smooth rouge

over the bruises darkening my flesh, paint

the jagged scar, marking my lips.

I am no victim,

but to say I’ve survived

suggests I didn’t die

with the dark prints of two hands

around my neck

IV.

Perhaps, it’s my demise and rise

from the flames of another’s fury that makes

for my impatient wait,

for the audible naming and claiming

of who you are,

where you’ve been,

of what you haven’t said.

We are poets.

Words grow on our tongues,

become food, giving life for our living

or they are the rocks that weight our pockets

for our drowning beneath the river’s rage.

There is no written page to read,

no chapter or verse

to memorize or rehearse

the words, lining our lungs.

This is improvisational speaking—

the un-sensational stanza and rhyme,

the un-extraordinary poetry of our ordinary lives.

The poet wrote,

Everything we write

will be used against us

or against those we love.

These are the terms,

take them or leave them.

Poetry never stood a chance

of standing outside history.**

What she meant to convey is no mystery.

Our poetry and prose is so pretty,

but we never stood a chance of escaping a stance.

The freedom of speech is not free of responsibility.

The price tag of our ability to speak measures the cost, the loss

of our careless and casual spending of the pennies that bought our thoughts.

Our silence costs as much,

bears the burden wrought

by what was lost, by who

we sacrificed for our fears.

I see that you are broken.

I hear your stunted, stuttered, and unspoken words.

But you are not so fragile.

You will not break beneath the weight

of words you can’t erase or revise.

Our silence and lies are as dead and deadly

as the knives we pull from our backs.

My intention is not to judge or to preach

but to somehow reach across the chasm

of these words unsaid to say:

When you speak it,

I will hear you.

* Excerpt by Audre Lorde

** Excerpt by Adrienne Rich

Flickr photo courtesy of AJ Baxter

For One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday

Cowgirls

2011-02-13T16:10:00.000-05:00

What remains is mortared stone and the wood-framed window where I sat sighing at the colored prairie, longing for some glimpse of Elizabeth—her hat’s weathered brim telling hard times she rarely spoke of. The old Chestnut finally arrived. Only now do I dare wander that purple expanse, seeking some evidence of my poor love.

Flash Fiction 55 for One Stop Poetry's Picture Prompt Challenge.

Photo courtesy of Sean McCormick