Category: Poetry

Poetry, Relationships

Feather Duster

smirkpretty

He turns on me
the jagged edge
of his gaze. New laws apply.
A laughing matter
is created
as it is
destroyed.
The joke freezes
to shards in his mouth
bleeding the taste
of steel. A doll’s arm
cracks off at the shoulder.
It lies on the other side
of the same room.

Lie as in
Recline.
Lay as in
Place.

On the other side
of the same bed
he lies
through stained lips. I lay
my fiction in his half-closed fist.
It is words that flatten
the pillow. The head itself
is adrift. I press
my hip to what’s left
of night and inflate
the space
between organelles
between passages
of text
closing off
the exits.
We are far more empty
than we are filled.

Down comfort. Damp fluff.
This vestigal hatchling
a nest
where clinging to the cross
hatch are limbs
I wrest like dreams,
his
that he forgets
to dam. The croche
slips round
and through. He falls

damned
to rest
in this jacket of veins
in this thicket of skin.
 
 

Letting Go, Poetry

Done Enough

smirkpretty

It starts to rain at midnight.
A spider takes refuge in the corner
by the window. Water is the last thing
We need around here.

I stack plates in the dishwasher
To make room
For sleep.

My visitor at the edge
Of the curtain near the bed
Seems neither moved by the arrival
Of tomorrow nor compelled to spin past
The threshold just to catch
The taillights of a south bound
Day dissolving into the horizon line.

Family, Poetry

Pistachio

smirkpretty

He arrived with a pack
of yogurt in plastic tubes
and nuts rattling
in their shells. Our children
ran to the creek. I didn’t know
his middle name and he didn’t know
my sister’s first and neither
of us saw the way the earth sloped
to a gulley until we stumbled
on two lost soccer balls
caught in ropes of mud.

The stage was set
into the side of the hill.
He leaned against me. I called out
mirror. He called out washing machine.
The children’s arms banged
against weathered boards.
It seemed so easy
to find a game, to play
at family.

We broke
to breathe and fill
bellies. I love these the girl said.
Nut splitting free. Salt licking
foreheads and beading on lips. No one kissed
yet. We took turns holding a dixie cup
motionless in the water to catch minnows
flitting just out of reach. We all believed
it could work,
this falling together
like a shell hinging shut
again, like a seed
starting over.
 

Change, Poetry

Dead Ringer

smirkpretty

The ting a single note was key
against coin, a passing
pocket, the handyman pausing to light
the corridor after a week
of burnt filament
and shadow. It was not
the dog turning
a corner. Of course
I look up anyway
because it is easier to recall
than to forget
her and easier still to forget
that recollection
is all I have left.
The last time tag tinged collar
was the last time.
I will get used to this
too soon. I will fail to catch
the first moment
that note chimes
and I don’t look up
anymore.