Author: poetryfest

It was a crispy, scratches-the-back-of-the-throat kind of day,
the day Gabriella burnt the house down. It was
A morsel – no, a maw-unhinging kind of bite – yes, the spilling,
sloppy, filthy kind of taste of living, it was, viscous dripping
down around the jaw, neck, doughy banks of the collarbone,
barbeque-flavoured kind of aliveness, it was,
the day Gabriella burnt the house down.

There’s a touch of smoke in the air, said her husband,
Lungs coursing with the black plumes of the marital bed,
There’s a touch of smoke. Tongue, fingertip, held aloft,
A very Winnie-the-Pooh something-or-other about him,
je ne sais quoi, pants around the ankles when he was found,
Don’t you know what Pooh means? Pondered himself to death.
The day Gabriella burnt the house down.

The judge in robes, a gavel poised to break,
A measured breath before the verdict falls.
The jury’s eyes, like iron gates opaque,
Behind them hum the distant prison walls.

The lawyer paces, weaving webs of doubt,
His silver tongue a blade behind a smile.
Yet truth and fiction wrestle, flail about—
And both may lose, if dressed in right denial.

The witness shakes—a hand upon the book,
Yet perjury’s a coin that all may spend.
The guilty sit with innocence’s look,
The innocent are guilty in the end.

What is the law but paper turned to dust?
A game of gold, a theater of trust

I follow
The depths of lines
Lines shaped, clashed, buried, crushed
Perfected to one single product
The expectations

Weights, dreams
All lost under a large vision
Drove with caution, delicateness
One by one, bit by bit

Whispers
Driven, imbedded
Planted at the back of the mind
A beautiful path?
I’m afraid not.

Maybe it is
Painted, decorated
Vivid colors, common colors, black and white,
covered with sweet cream and frosting—
That’s not what I want.

I want
My own path, a new road
One that I find pretty and sparkly
Just like those tiny jewels glittering in the sea
That’s what I really want.

So I
trace the depths
Out the sea, the window, the lines
Flee the pleas of expectations
Pursued into one, perfect—myself
The dawn of hope.

If my life is actually mine, can I control it
Or final responsibility for me to be shared
Subject to other people’s wills and whims
It is especially true as that final light dims
As I and those closest to me are prepared
If a candle splutters out, should it be re-lit

To keep good health is ever our intention
We all believed some rights were our own
And non negotiable, that we must protect
Just as life, always treated with due respect
Yet there are cases where a doubt is sown
Involving a legal and medical intervention

But there are so many social repercussions
Families suffering as well as the one dying
That desire for a fully agreed, timely end
Without a negative headline it might send
And none should be castigated for trying
Meanwhile, more pain during discussions

Surely, there needs to be some oversight
But that is never the same as the final say
With a minor risk of a premature decision
Why let the uninvolved make it a mission
But they will not be there on the final day
To witness that peaceful dying of the light

Know myself

Grow myself
Grounded.

I’m fucking scared
Stay here for 8 to 10 breaths

Bring your hands to you heart
Now there’s nothing there

If it doesn’t get better here than we have to leave here
Settle into the pain

But I’m stuck in here

Round your spine, push the flow away from me.

But I can’t outrun some

Go back and change me.

Give yourself a bit more space

Close your eyes

16 to 20 breaths
over and over again it’s like nothing’s fair

There’s got to be something else here
Yeah there has to be

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?

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”
Ecclesiastes

Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know
as spring melts into summer, summer fall,
her days might end before this winter’s snow?

If she did, how could she let arias flow—
pretend she was immune to each passing squall?
Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know

as cedars snap, their limbs plummet below
and breezes crescendo into caterwauls—
her days might end before this winter’s snow?

Even when hope communes with shadow
her serenades lift the descending pall.
Who’s to say the cardinal doesn’t know?

Perhaps aware that death lies near does bestow
a gift to her. A calla lily’s wake up call.
Her days might end before this winter’s snow,

yet she greets each morning from her bough
enthused by light’s ever spreading sprawl.
Perhaps the cardinal does indeed know
her days might end before this winter’s snow.

Mary Keating

After “Hunger” by Rachel Eliza Griffith (76)
Breaths after the wedding he tried to bite the rotting peach
Expecting vibrant, plump skin breaking, dripping
down the soft palm. I hid from buzzards up above.
Predators from the wild that I had unequivocally revered.
Left in the liver of a young painter, disease
cried softly until it screamed. The sickness consumes
the human possibility, coaxing its gentle pain. Dress reddening dark
until I called out to the man from what I remembered hazily.
Lacerations can be made, forcefully, even through a covenant.
Lacerations can be made whether or not the body will betray.
I hurried to dress each morning because it would sting to be unclothed & alone.
The man’s smile spreading thin, different than its inception & showing
its yellowed, separate teeth. I felt like curling up, but cautiously, I stayed tall.
Found that I was curious deeply about the killing cells
reaching excitedly into the organ. I read the essays,
Spent hours on the websites of pseudo-medicine. Was this the purpose and the punishment?
This was another crime falling into my sentence, the date of my execution.
Attaching all of the contusions into a map,
walking me down the aisle. He admires a deer skull
shot dead in July, staring & staring at the tiles on the wall,
a strange place to relive your death. The sickening body dismissed
with seeming alien to what he wanted when he asked.

You make it seem like it’s a joke
But you never see what happens when we woke

You may never see us cry
But on the inside we ask why

Wonder what would happen if you woke
Feeling like your all alone
Knowing that all that’s here is your bone

What would happen if you woke
When on the outside your smiling
But on the inside your dying

What would happen when you woke
Feeling like you want to die
Yet you can never be seen to cry

But what happens if you woke
And all your life broke apart
And you didn’t get a chance to restart

Yet what would happen if you woke
And your eyes are stirred and dry
Yet all you want to do is cry

Wondering what would happen if you woke
When the world seems to end and you are nothing
And when everybody looks at you and murmurs something

And what would happen if you woke
With the uncontrollable urge to self-destruct
And your emotions seem to finally erupt

What would happen if you woke
And all at once everything seems lost
And you decide it’s worth the cost

Yet what would happen if you woke
Feeling like no one would care if you passed
At least you would be free at last

So what would happen if you woke
Feeling winter’s cold embrace
While you feel you lost the race

Wondering what would happen if you woke
With your heart strings on the very last line
And you were messed up and broken with a sign

What would happen if you woke
When the sky was dark and grey
And all you feel is agony and decay

What would happen if you woke
When the whole world was a smokey mess
And all you think is I want this less

The things we go through aren’t a joke
So just imagine if you woke

that it’s one
or the other. You live
for yourself and others;
it makes us
human. It makes
sense of the world
of an orca tearing the head off a dolphin,
connective tissue still linking the body
segments

The orca shares the kill,
takes only what it needs
leaves the rest to keep
the process going. To keep
the bird’s wings pinned to the ground,
the lion’s claws dug into flesh,
violence, submission
it’s how we progress

The earth bleeds in words, the earth bleeds in acid.
the sky echoes names, anguish,
dark truths. Meaning leaks out,
seeping red-hot bubbles.

Long, red worms,
frills catching heat,
nutrients and narrative,
minerals and meat