Poetry - Old and New

Linda

Veiled behind a vowing crepe
You neared death and made him promise
he would marry someone else.

Did envy shadow you at heaven's reception?
a covetous pining that he remain
faithfully and eternally yours?

Or was it abandoned at the door,
A mink coat hung heavy in the foyer
leaving you weightless


Every 28 Days

I hate when people
compare a period
to a blossoming flower
arranged neatly in the hourglass
of their underwear.
It's really more of a goop
of stretching, brilliant...

But it's not disgusting.
It isn't the same as feces
or urine
just passing through
like some tourist headed
to Disneyworld
and missing the smalltown wonder
on the way.

No, periods dwell in depths
pain inside of a girl.
The pain that makes us faint
and hold our stomachs
hunched
in a woman's embrace.


A Prayer for my Father

My baby fingers
cross over the
Blue vein of the cross tattoo
on your wrist--
I cross my heart.


The Poet

You can put her on a pedestal
but you can't keep her there.

When she looks at you
with those kind, shark eyes

and says she loves your work,
You know she is simply alive.

^Written about the poet Julia Kasdorph

The Girls

Oh how the girls hate with their eyes
This one because I once had her man,
And her

because she wants the one I have now.
Oh how the girls hate with their eyes
Not like men hate
with their fists and
pistols.

Girls hate
through smiles and greetings
and their strangling, beautiful eyes.


Thigh Buttons

I sit
with a clock
in my hands
fingering a new button
sewn into the skin of my
high
inner
thigh.

Today it's a blue one.
Thigh button colors
are the richest
on earth; on
my body.
The clock clicks
silently,
tremors of seconds counting;
buttons gone by,
my life gone by.

I say I like the sound,
sound of my pendant
as it falls to my bosom.
My husband's chiding response:
A shiny new button
bleeding crimson on my thigh.

^Most people have trouble understanding this. What are the first things that come to your mind?

Vain Immortal

I.
Science class dissections
destroyed her appetite,
but it didn't take much
to do that.
She never paid her
respectful debt
at funerals. Said
she hated the smell of the dead,
the way they never moved while
she was so very alive.
While she was alive.

II.
She had a lacey voice
and high
like the panic shrill of the killdeer.
Became a backwards Polaroid picture,
fading purple.
People from school can't even remember
her last name.
All that trouble to be popular
and they can't remember.
They won't forget
how he doused her in gasoline
and lit her low-rise jeans;
her tanning bed skin turning
to flaking black firewood
abandoned on an empty beach.

III.
I imagine her
eyelashes whisking away,
Ants tugging them along her cheeks.
Remnants of waterproof mascara
still smudged there--
She hated that.
She seemed to thrive
on piercings and plucked eyebrows.
"It doesn't hurt," she'd assure the mirror,
But I bet it did.
I know she felt it like
she felt the tingle of the flames on her arms
manicured nails melting long
after she had died.
Then she could honestly
and resolutely tell the world,
"It doesn't hurt."

IV.
We paid our respects,
due or not.
Saw the face in the coffin;
the one she'd worked so hard
perfecting
only to look like this in the end.
Extraordinary in life,
no different in death.
Vain immortal
in her forgotten eternity.


The Guilt that Doesn't Follow

Secrets exchanged through
your cherry coke
and her bottled water.
From across the room you're
eyeing her
as you did the night before
from your barstool.
Dancing with her friends
you stalked your gazelle like
a patient hunter.
As you would have her believe,
a gentle hunter.
She giggled her consent
to the poised rifle:
Your welcoming hand.

Now her once-virgin eyes
glance from your face
into her glass.
Her own face flush
with a would-be shame.
Smirking, staring
you scorn her for pretending.
You've never left shame
in any girl; Virgin
or not.


Hitchhiking I

One long, leaning curve
in the road
and we saw it.

We had been hurrying home
on Halloween night,
an eve associated
with nothing good.
So on we rushed
my mom, my siblings, me
until we came to a curve.

One long, leaning curve
in the road
when we saw it.

It was only a girl
(she had long hair)
but then it turned around
and we saw the beard.
So scruffy and patchy
it looked as though
it had been drawn on.

"Not a girl," I whispered
as we prepared to
speed by the thing.
But mother saw its vehicle
broken down.
Deciding then
at the last second
to be the stupid Samaritan.

"It's Halloween," we reminded her.
But to her it was just another night
and this monster
simply in need of
assistance.
So it got in
and we were silent.

"I know it looks weird,"
the creature said,
"but I was going to a party,
I'm supposed to be a man."
"Well you fooled us,"
my idiot little sister
had to say.
And we drove the thing home.


Hitchhiking II

I was a stubborn teenager,
should've listened to my parents.
Too prideful to call for a ride home.
I was out way past my curfew
and I was high
so boldly I thrust out
my thumb
under the fluorescent light
on the street.

He told me he was Jamaican,
but he didn't need to.
The truck smelled like patchouli,
a green, yellow, black
miniature flag adorned
the rear-view mirror.
He wanted to know my age.
14. Naive, young 14.
Thought I knew about the world;
had never heard that accent
in real life before.

He asked me what I would do
if he wanted to rape me
or murder me
and bury me in the park.
My grip on the door handle
tightened.
He said he wasn't going to let me out,
said he wanted to know where I lived
so he could talk to my parents
about letting me thumb rides
from strangers.

But I refused.
Stalker or concerned citizen
I wasn't about to let
my parents know
how right they had been.


Lust

Addicted to the girls across the street
He watches blondes and redheads; clothes are neat.
Inside his bedroom crying at the thought
about the things he does and those he ought.
His wife innocently dreams in bed,
she'll never know the thoughts inside his head.
He knows he only has himself to blame
for all the girls--he never knew their names.
Just one more time, he'll only watch the girls
those treasures in their mom's high-heels and pearls.
For now he'll let the issue go unresolved,
while lives of little girls will soon dissolve.

^We were asked to choose one of the 7 deadly sins in my poetry class. I won't apologize for my disturbed and brutal poetry... I love to write from abandoned perspectives and it's just part of who I am.


If you have read this far, please don't forget to comment. Honesty is always welcome!