Author: poetryfest

Play that song for me
The one we heard dodging cars on the highway
It sounded like brake lights and low beams
Choking on exhaust plumes and picking kicked up gravel from your hair
Surrounded by a symphony of a city
I sang a serenade in an off key harmony
And you danced like a lamb freshly fallen from the womb
The audience laughed in whispers and the streetlights spotlit our encore

A boxer without gloves
who dreams to get out of the ring
to get some sun.
I did not want to fight against you
and knock you out.
You and your lover.

Why did you want to arrange this match?

You know I never cared
about times, half-times,
intercostal pain,
the belly and its line…
Never cared
about the yelling crowd either.

I just wanted to go out,
to get an ice-cream somewhere,
with you,
in the sun.

I was fourteen years old when I met you;
Then sixteen years old when I fell
fast into Willie Nelson, music you could live in.
There are a lot of things that teach you to be in love:
Denver’s Mile High Market with
the open western sky: America.

It was a long drive when
we piled into the Jeep and you
whisked me off to where you were
from. It only took twelve
minutes to make me want years
in this house: dusty and old.

Everything and Anything

Quite a few years ago,
My life was fairly tough,
Wasn’t sure what to do,
Just knew enough was enough.

Once filled with fear,
Unable to see a way out,
But I slowly regained my confidence,
Started removing my self doubt.

Jumped through every burning hoop,
Played the long hard game,
Made a promise to my boys and me,
We’d never ever go through the same.

I’ve fought through it all,
Nearly absolutely everything,
As my love for my boys,
Means more than anything.

©️Ailsa Wright 2025

I named him
silver tongue
after the shade of trees.
Between the meeting of our voices,
he sang a blasphemous song.
The way cacti splice open
for the sun under the anvil of time…
The way their porcupine spines
cut its rays and make the gods bleed.

It was like eyes looking into eyes
turning to dust
hatching stone…
looking into the abyss
becoming the abyss
the hiding from the unspoken,
the casting of the unknown.

I have only this skin.
He is draped in armor
like solid matter
like the invention of sin.
The trees howl
without letting him out.
Without him knowing they
save his place under their
damp foundations…

I want to take him there.

Where there is a distinctive taste
of beauty
an innocence of the un-bound.
a fervor towards pepper-spiked tea
a revulsion to stale spice
a kiss of truth burning his
esophagus on the way down.

He sits with the curve of his back pressed
against the cold, indifferent brick wall,
where within, among the glaring fluorescent lights
regular people shuffle along with their zombie walk.
The tendrils of chill seep through his torso,
curl about the tips of his fingers as they protrude
from his thinning and fraying fingerless gloves,
and nibble at his toes through the cracks in his worn shoes.
His matted hair gathers in thick branches across his drooping shoulders,
hangs over his eyes –
eyes that have seen the underside of our world,
the side that regular eyes notice not –
blue eyes with cracks of red veins reaching across the white.
Coughing, his lungs a-rattle like the change in his tin cup he shakes in the air,
he wheezes as another real-world person walks out of the store
and begs for change to put food in his belly –
Regular Man turns his head in disgust,
his kind almost always do –
and the beggar drops his cup to his side once more,
waiting for a person, a good person, the right person,
to show him a rarity in his world –
a kindness.

Cast stones ‘gainst
Dark bedrooms,

“Mother, I’m scared,”
She cries. Eyes wet.

Cast those stones,
Rid the self of demons
And ghosts, and monsters.

Before the switch gets flipped
And he is standing in front of

you.

As a boy You played
The mud
Flapped in it
Freckled
With soil
Warm puddles
Reflected the steep
Ahead

You push the clay,
You will burn it soon,
In a pot of stolen fire,
Burn some stolen clay,
Only a few more steps,
Only if it hardens,
Freezes into rock,

He pushes the Rock
Pushing it for so long
It’s so wrong
How the hill stretches
He’s tired now
The cold bones ache
Hands
Slack and stale
He warms by pushing
Into clay
Burns him in him
But he can’t use his hands
You can’t use them.

My Lady is persistently clothed in beauty, a
vision in her
gowns, a sight
in her trousers,
a woman of
enthralling severity in whatever she may hide
her sharp teeth behind.

My Lady is a queen; if not by
birth, then by
her ruthless ambition,
by the decisive
glint to her
gleaming eyes, by the heavy crown worn upon
her eternally downturned brow.

My Lady is a monster in disguise, her
sharp villainous form
hidden behind those
cunning smiles and
those sly quips
and those close brushes of skin against skin,
of person against monster.

My Lady is of that kind of beauty
which not only
seems to impart
to its possessor
firmness and animosity,
but to strike into others an instinctive recognition
of those qualities within.

My Lady is of a breed of darkness
unseen by the
common eye, unheeded
by those above,
and yet, united
in enjoined darkness, she is wholly understood by
I and I alone

A spoonful of honey and a glass of water
Follows the single gulp of Cyclopam
To put a gag on the gag
“Another month off the life chart”
Strips of bitterness since two thousand-six
Aunt Flo doesn’t give a damn
Just as my OB/GYNs
“You have to live with it”
“Manage with medications”
You aren’t special
This is every woman’s problem
Kindly suffer in silence. Thank you.
Hatred gives purpose
We start all over again, the new gyno & I
First base with speculum and
TVS for the third
“Having a child might probably help”
Emphasis on “probably” here.
“Double Income No Kids?
You deserve this!”,
Society chimes in now and then
My boss is too empowered
“Only the meek ones
seek paid period leaves”, she blasts.
Hormonal pills just pretend
to smooth my frayed nerves
And to boost the will to carry on
“We need more research into this!”,
the Keyboard Warriors fume.
While the laws of the world
are being rewritten
to control a woman’s body,
Inside the bathroom stalls,
tired of combat in
the eternal war that is womanhood,
My helpless self
sobs in silence wondering
Isn’t the present scary?
More than the past or future?