Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
25 push ups will not get you a promotion.
They won’t get you published
and they won’t get you laid.
25 push up do not walk the dog, stock the fridge, or keep the kid out of jail.
25 push ups do not set the record straight.
They do not cover the rent or replace the busted alternator.
25 push ups do not even give you defined biceps.
You’d need curls and rows and extensions, multiple sets,
and a gym membership.
Ignore if you must what bends in the flat beds along the stretch of highway spooling out ahead,
those crepe-skinned crones in sun hats you could almost mistake for scarecrows.
Do you pause to wonder how old ladies always end up in the garden?
Do you notice us at all?
![[no title: p. 304] 1970 by Tom Phillips born 1937](https://smirkpretty.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/phillips_tom.jpg?w=578&h=896)
Surely it is not art. She pulls her phone from her pocket and steps to the stage. Her first time. Tapping the screen, she balances it on the ancient music stand. Grips the mic with both hands. Through ums and mumbles, she describes a man who called it love before the girl learned the proper name for abuse.
Surely this is not poetry, nowhere close to art.
Art you know. You saw Gipsy Kings at the Barns and walked Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors at the Hirshhorn. You can recite Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” by heart.
You know art.
Surely this falls short. Yet…
Down here, sand slips free from the shape
it took since last rain,
a low creek creeping up the bank
sloughing away any illusion of permanence.
The soft, fat hide of the earth glistens, catching the stray glint
and tossing it back, wild and wide.
Something buried in the thawing deep
scratches away at its carapace.
I press my spine against the old skin
willing it to split even though it is early still,
even though it will leave me raw,
Another frost sure to come.
Riding the dizzy spell
I grip the wall to keep from falling.
You guide me to a solid place
hold me steady
searching my face
and something under it
for signs.
You ask,
how is your heart?
The first one tells fart jokes.
The second refused to vote for Hillary.
“I just couldn’t,” he says. “Too dirty.”
The third brought a gun to a spat with his wife
and now visits his kids supervised.
The fourth hates his parents still, over four decades in.
The fifth – well. The fifth moved his folks
into a condo down the road so his girls could grow up with them close.
The fifth leads the pack for several long laps.
Picture the vines creeping from his collar.
The stem snaking.
The petal pink and thick as a human ear unfurling from the place his cheek should be.
Pollen-pouched bees yellowing as they gather
what he was always bound to become.
What comes next.
This is our revenge.
Those of us he mounts to build the crystal barricade,
its pearled locks and curtains
thin as whispers and thick
as what stands between dimensions.
He designed it all to let in the curated glow
and keep out everything that makes the light.
May 24, 2013
He twines black ribbon around his wrist. With a yellow strand, I mirror him. Weave slips around the thumb and passes through open channels between fingers stretched wide. Twice around and across, the dressing lays itself over the bumps of knuckles where once we counted days of the month. He is finished with both of his before I am even halfway around the first. His fingers turn my hand and graze my left palm just before mummifying its living flesh beneath warped satin dressing.
Knee deep in it. Gold like sable, like suede.
Like the silk edge of the blanket that held infant you.
A mermaid’s tail, the otter’s fur slipping past
and churning against your calf
a strand of stars and all the fire they contain,
the heat they release.
At your feet this river
of light.
“What would you do if all men had a 9pm curfew?” She asks the world.
The world responds.
I would walk at night with music in my ears.
I would shop for groceries after my kids are in bed.
I would stay late in the lab.
Lay on the grass and see all the stars.
Lay across the warm hood of my car.
Sleep in my front yard all summer long.
I would not carry my keys like claws.
I would pitch a tent beside my favorite waterfall.
Run on the trail until my legs give out.
Sleep where I land.
Continue reading “9pm Curfew”
Shannon E. Williams 