Author: poetryfest

I tell a man
I can grow a mustache thicker than he

We equate femininity with
hysteria of the uterus

Blood trickling down fleshy female thighs
Perforating gory clothes and sheets and toilet rimmed bowls

But deep deep inside of me
My bones
decompose
From the inside out
And I can’t pronounce the name
of the illness destroying me

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small face of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.” – Elie Weisel

In the silence much is said
For God to witness countless dead

When truth was needed to speak aloud
We held our tongues as silent crowd

Not a fall of snow showered night
But rain of ashes from spirits flight

No defiant words were spoke
As children burned to blackish smoke

What remains are words unsaid
For in the silence…our souls have fled.

************************************

History is a clock
That ticks in time
Where past is future
In moments that ryhme

Make sure you know what that boy has hidden
beneath the folds of a torn white sleeve.
Is it the stump remaining from an amputated arm
or the lethal charge handed-off by an older brother?

Always know the nature of smudge-faced boys
before entering the village with your loaded M-16.
Keep a map with escape routes tucked in your jacket.
Fill your pockets with gumdrops and bars of milk chocolate.

These boys with their—possibly—missing arms
will hold you accountable for the United Nations resolution,
every promise made by the unanimous assembly.
Even those oaths you were never intended to uphold.

Boys have their ways of keeping you to your word.
They know the implications of the footnotes and the fine print.
Despite all your best efforts and all your ammunition,
boys tend to become precisely who they were raised to be.

So keep your eyes on the twelve-year-old approaching your position.
Look at both hands. Watch where he places them.
Wait to see what objects are hidden behind white fabric.
And never tell a soul about the candy

dipped in poison.

Her mother, she imagined,
had died at noon
with the curtains torn open
with the sun bright
in this room with no shadows.

Her baby sister, beside her
In a blanket on the kitchen table
in front of her
was squalling with life;
she had been told to
stay, to talk to the baby,
to sing to the baby,
to learn to love this baby,
a stranger who committed
murder in that well-lit bedroom
with the sun bright
with the curtains torn open,

in the room with no shadows
where their mother
was crying herself to death.

might have dug
the humor in naming

an insect after
Lady Gaga—

Nicaraguan
treehoppers

two horns jutting
from the shoulders

wack fashion sense
vibrant singers—

would have instantly
unpacked metaphoric

relationships between
stealing another’s cukes

and colonialism,
or recognized that

urban heat islands
and currency exchanges

lead back to capitalism,
after all, both cut

from the same vapid cloth,
the invariable vegetation

of vaccine hesitancy
and gospel truths.

Leoš might have hooked
up with a Moravian Fraulein

just to luxuriate on folktales
based on a bulldog

named Crowbar that barfed
cold turkey from daily jaunts

with its owner to some Brno
tavern, warm beer as stackable

as silver, the inebriated
wit seated down counter

as indivisible and untidy
as an odd integer peering

into a timepiece, and
wizened barflies dreaming

aloud about a future
a century hence

with insects whose children
slowly ransack ash trees

along the boulevard,
newcomers to the game.

My body is a home
Built of words and thoughts
Of joy and pain
To surround my core
And kindle the flame
As the sparks of life begin

To cling so tightly
To the simple notion
Of a life so fleeting
With broken promises
And dreams retreating
You may even judge it sin

But in these four walls
I keep it safely
Propped by studs
To a scaffold of bone
Under a river of blood
Covered by a wall of skin

A cage of flesh
Preserving the hope
Of what remains
Of the heart that cries
And yearns the same
Yet steadily beats within

Wandering the path
I’ve walked many times
And again
Stumbling to find footing.
Such rooted steps on roots
So dense, how could I stumble?

And again,
The leaves trip footprints
The sticks lay underneath
Cold wind moves ashy sand
With dusty shoes
Walking is a dirty venture.

A flowing underpass
I walk passed
On concrete,
Solidified steps
On concrete,
Sanctioned steps,
Rocks lay underneath
Foundations of many
Moons leading layered landings
And starlit movements,
Forward following waves.

No visionary reliance of end
Just memories of recollection
Knowing where to place
Footsteps
And again,
How to stay
Balanced.

I wonder if he heard his mother calling
The same way he heard her voice
The moment her skull hit the car roof
Veronica saying goodbye as he watered his flowers

He used to walk me by his garden
Plucking tomatoes off the vine with my tiny hands
Asking me to test the taste of garlic in his pickle buckets
Painting both a statue of Mary and a U.S.S. Enterprise model at his workbench

He never pictured me pushing him in his chair
Taking him to the bathroom
Fixing him dinner and watching Westerns on TV
Should I feel guilty that I didn’t give him the opportunity to walk me down the aisle?

I hope he knows I loved him
I hope he felt it every time I squeezed his hand
Every time he kissed my cheek
Every time we saw a bird

And I hope Clarice came for him
Extended her reach as he asked the nurse to open the window
That the last though in his brain was love

tenacious echoes articulate my cilia—
a nervous murmur,
like half-forgotten constellations
mapped only once
in the freckles flourishing
across your shoulder blade.

descend with me—
wade through bleeding incense
let your fingers improvise,
please—
something minor, something fractured
on the tired bar piano.

drown the syllables of my departure
echoing beneath the vascular canopy
of meshed douglas fir,
where goodbye hums back—
recursive, unresolved—
in the tense geometry of branches.

My grandmother passed her green thumb on
To my mother, but I fumbled the catch; there’s
A plastic shrub on my nightstand but that’s really the extent of it.
I suppose I was too busy watching them, the way
My grandmother waded through the shallows like a lakebird to
Scoop up algae with her great big net. Or how
My mother would pluck along the edges of the gardenbed.
Digging out weeds, trading forehead sweat for mud
With one swipe of her gentle glove.

I never understood it. How to tell weeds from flowers,
How to pry a plant loose by the roots, tug it up from the dirt.
I’d photosynthesize within the window
And watch as they made up our lives–
Stamped out weeds, ferried mulch
To the front beds. They worked their tired arms
Along the siding of the house, scrubbing off
The shedskins of mayflies who with their dying juices
Had formed a gray coat around the paneling.

And later, ripened by the sun,
They’d come back to water everything inside the protected house