Author: poetryfest

“A heavy package came in the mail today,
I put it under the tree, a gift, right?”

Gray haired, wrinkled grumpy feminine frown.
Raised on a cotton farm, three of ten.
Just another field hand, wasn’t time for much love.
Time for survivin’, and a green elm switch.

Sixteen and married, “Good for nothin! Sat on the porch.
Always grabbin’ me here, or down there.
Drinkin’ and Spittin’, put a black skillet upside his head.
Drug him out feet first, that ended his abuse.”

Kids came and went, grandkids, too.
“Tried to love ’em, but didn’t really know how.
Saved a bunch from waitin’ table, Sullivan’s bar and restaurant,
Three dead husbands, hard, but I survived!”

Lived in a smokey apartment, big black bible, rockin’ chair.
they came and went, payin’ their family dues.
Each wanting a piece of the pie.
“If you’ve got a quarter, save a nickel of it.”

Finally, spending too much on nursing home care,
She died, consumed and eaten from deep inside.
Faithful sons learned her lessons well –
“Funeral’s too expensive, dump her ashes someplace, anyplace.”

“This package came in the mail today”,
A childish voice informed me.
“I put it under the Christmas tree, a gift, right?”
“Yes, I mused, “A Gift….”

When I gaze up at the blue sky
and wonder what I have done

to not be able to fly,
the sky falls;

a river, light looping around my arms and legs
slowly falling with rain that hits my open eye

poisonous flowers; human emotions often lie

Create. Destroy. Craft. Then rest.
Trying to resist the pull of relapse.
Create. Destroy. Craft.
But a void stirs quietly beneath the skin.
Submit. Rejected. Dejected.
Try again.
Send another.
Apply once more.
One hundred rejections deep.
Create. Destroy.
Tethered to the life of my art.
Shards of doubt press inward, sharp and constant.
Doubt. Shout. Create. Destroy.
Create. Submit.
Create. Craft.
Bound to this aching need to make.
Rejected. Never accepted.
Despondent, I fall back again.
Create. Craft. Bound. Submit.
Create. Craft. Bound. Submit.
Create. Craft. Bound. Submit.
And then—
Accepted. Relieved. Seen. Accepted.

Tiny Opossum
Treed, and eating an onion
Reflective eyes bright

Bit, baby turtle
I almost mowed off your head
Silence, I saved you

Crows, murderous crows
We exchanged shiny gifts once
You ate my pepper

Skinny Deer of night
Your eyes are so brightly lit
Seen only by light

Raccoon of the woods
Bandit eater of night trash
The cutest felon

Great gray fox sneaker
You sleuth in shadows covert
What does the fox say

Stray cats of Piedmont
Frivolous fights of feral
Who feeds you catnip

Goofy turkey tom
long neck bird of autumn’s din
Roast at three fifty

Blue-tailed skink hiding
I saw you slither away
Will you sit with me

Skunk of black and white
Putrid sprayer of my dog
I smelled you for months

One always imagines the little bird in the forest
through which it flies
until it reaches a clearing
in the green and sunlight

But what if this little bird dreams of the sea
and feels trapped in the meadow within the woods

It dreams of storms
of salty drops of water
chasms
grottoes
waves that threaten to swallow it whole
and winds that will carry it away

The little bird is weary of the green,
uneasy among the trees
Furiously, it flies to the clearing
clutching a branch with bitter claws

The little bird wants to taste stones
feel cold dampness beneath its feathers
and be overwhelmed by the North

That enchanting smile that
you left turns me into an
ocean of serenity. I remember
your deep, bright eyes looking at
me with admiration whenever I
look up into the sky. Rest in peace,
my dear loved one.

Brown hoodie, faded letters
Lined with fleece and cloth
Might be old, but never better,
I’m not all too posh.
Inside these folds of cotton
I peer out with only eyes
With hands stuffed in my pockets,
I tell myself not to cry.
My knees up to my chest,
And the fabric’s tight in an embrace
That gives me the comfort
I can’t find in no one’s face.
With the drawstring tight,
I pull myself into a cocoon
With the drawstring tight,
I peer for the last time at the moon.
And suddenly there’s
Red and blue
There’s sound, but I can’t hear it
And black dots pepper my view
When finally I come to,
I lay in a white bed
With a hood about my head
And empty holes around the neck
Where the drawstring don’t poke through.

Written by a young person at the Child Study and Treatment Center

What If?

Me and you
What would we do?
Can I trust you?
More importantly
Can I trust myself too?

You’ve been on my mind
day after day
The more I think
the more you go away
I wish you knew
how much I cared for you

What if?
Me and you!

The brisk of wind swayed a golden rye

and atop—

Rays of rainbow brushed the sky.

I’ve never been surer: you killed my heart.
I knew of its death in bone before brain.
Such a catastrophe of sunken skin lumped
together in an upended scar, cluttered at
the center of my heart. It seems

you knew, all along, about a vertical
sabotage. It’s all over my apartment floor.
There’s a blood stain in the kitchen.
I mistook the crimson for tomato sauce.
Dotted in turmoil on the polka of my tea
towels. I’m afraid I make too much pasta.
A Carbonara maestro, if you will. Pesto basil,
a bowl of pear green, topped in oily golden
nectar, sits on the table most evenings.

This morning,
I stood stiff as a mountain. Every nerve
avalanched down my blanched skin.
Drenched in metallic sap with salt, I ended
up slipping on a bloody pulp and it heel-
toed along my foot. The heart slingshot,
lodged behind the oven, and when I
gently bent to further inspect my
heartbroken mess, just then, discerning
it was long dead.