Author: poetryfest

When the light turned around
Naught a sound then
As the walks across the floor
Moved along
And the sounds then
And the eyes turn about

“I don’t believe god is after me, if he were, the first strike would have been enough” – Roy Sullivan, a park ranger who was struck by lightning seven separate times. He took his own life after the seventh strike due to crippling loneliness”

Least expected, seizure or symphony?
spark,
Turn and touch my cheek.
She danced yellow, like a thousand fireflies.
The lightning says:
“My heart skips beats when you’re with me.”
If this were a bell curve I’d be dead last.
We were
secret lovers at the ranch near Heaven’s gate.
Near because I was never allowed
into His kingdom, for my wings were not yet real
She fell from the sky
seven times
like wedding vows
I stood on burnt wings like Icarus, if he were unlucky.
She was real, abrasive and shocking.
She was perfect
and I was
by lightning, loved.
Hips brushing past one another, friction between clouds.
My cries echoed like thunder, the sun
rarely shone
on the crux of my nose where my eyebrow ended,
or the lines
going down my back
like a painting of her.
The only “she” closest to me now is the static from the cumulonimbus.
Alas, the thunderclap could not take me.
So I’m taking matters into my own hands.
A shame,
I will never find a greater love than the apoplexy left by her kiss.

Was all the darkness worth it?
Shreds of light burn pupils as they stain the beauty.
The little corpse brought to now is silent.
Lifeless thought cannot withstand the tragedy of being.
Its puny body is angelic and sweet,
Lying still with eyes closed with smile spread.
How could something so new suffer so much,
In such short time.
Finding beauty is a weakness,
And where is God now that the beauty is dead

Every night she laid
In bruising arms,
Choking – their hold,
Twisting, pushing prodding,
In the company
Of sharp whispers
Tinged with honey,
Breaking skin
To unleash
The quiet drips
Of ruby red.
Rocking sleep,
In their firmness,
A poison untouched,
Unprompted,
She drank,
Lulled unfalteringly,
Into Eternity.

The land slashed by blades of steel fills me with sorrow;
vines and thistles cling to the asphalt, crushed beneath the rush of passing wheels.
Through the green, I glimpse black scars, the marks of past fires.

How fragile and soft I feel in the wind, the sun’s torment burning in the distant sky.

I do not fear death;
I honor it with each stone I pile carelessly, scraping my hands, living the pain that climbs up my arms.

Each tumble of stones, I rebuild.
Time undoes my creation, only making it truer.
This is my labor, this is truth.
I bless the stones with blood: death does not scare me.
I prepare for it with care.

My mother always smelled of shea butter
and cigarettes. She’d fall asleep sitting up,
smoking. If you didn’t take it and put it out
there’d be a new hole in her comforter.

My mother rarely slept at night,
the ants in her legs moved too much.
Some nights she’d ball up her fist and pound
at the bugs. It only helped a little bit.

My mother never showed up on time,
before she left the house she’d have to check her purse:
Cigarettes, backup cigarettes, multiple diet cokes, keys, lighter, cash, phone.
Cigarettes, back up cigarettes, multiple diet cokes, keys, lighter, cash, phone.
Then again to make sure. And ten more times after that.
She was convinced she’d forget something important.

My mother always showed up.
Performances, Awards, Parent teacher conferences,
she was there. Not once did she ever grimace
when I idolized the parent who never was.

My mother always waited for me to react.
When she told me it was stage four,
with her lips pulled tight, trying to hold it in,
She didn’t cry until I started to shake.

My mother always loved me.
In her final moments she spent her energy
reassuring my brother and I,
that she wasn’t giving up on us.

The stillness of a drought day—
an instance, Lucifer smiles.
His smile is last breath,
rattling windows,
bird wings across the skin.
“Say, do you know
what a curse is?”

“I can think of an instance.”

“Tell me.”

“My mother’s mother died
on a wooden table. Her gaze
latched onto my mom’s—”

Wind trapped and twisting,
singing through wooden
cracks, creaking with storm.
We don’t say she drank, we say
the Hibiscus ate her. We don’t say
bruises – she loved lilac
blooms. Midnight-beatings, dress cut
too low at the back. We don’t say
cirrhosis. Her liver bloomed.
We say weakness.

“Is that a curse?”

“It is.” Lucifer’s laugh, the after-
image of humming wishes,
cruelly. “The women
in your family die
strange deaths.”

One, wandered the village roads,
rough, rocky. Barefoot in a night-
gown. Come light me a candle,
she said, “I’m dying.”
She died.

Another, an aunt I never met, laid out
in a pale-green kitchen.

“Bend and kiss her cheek.”
She smelled of fruit left out to boil
in the sun. Hay and sweet corn.
Pumpkin bloated on the fields.
Sunflower rot. Hands pushed me,
“Go on, go ahead. Kiss her,
kiss her.”

Liver left out
in the pale-green kitchen
blooms into lilac-colored
sunflowers. Kiss
the summer. Stillness, wings across
the skin. Sour cherry schnapps
stings the hardest
down your throat.

can I tell you that I hate the smell?
of saline solution, please, I only ask
because I’m not too sure you can hear
me over your own noises. I understand
it must be uncomfortable with the wet
muscles of your throat constricting
over a piece of hard rounded plastic and
a stiff body from a distressing hospital bed
but what I am dealing with is much worse.
the smell I’m telling you is more
horrible than that—that bag you have
hanging above your head, sitting pretty
as the morning light shines through
making it seem like a crystal of life
replacing the blood pUmPiNg, racing,
s t o p p i n g—-through your heart and
turning you cold, a forced shiver pricking
on your rising flesh that even rattles
down to the bone the kind you’d only have
from an October day in November. saline,
plain, yet sharp & burning, a bad alcohol in
my nose I never get used to smell every time
I gave you my blood and coupled with a
machine that tracks an anxious heart
I must feel sorry for myself because
the heartbeats have never sounded so
much like an unwilling harmony between
soft chested birds—beep chirp beep chirp
beeeeeeeee chirp chirp—I’m sorry I
know you’re going to ask why, why
I am doing something like this in the
daylight of your fractured mind but
can I tell you, please, that I hate?
the smell of saline because I’m afraid
no one else will listen to me. even now
you’re closing your eyes on me, don’t
be tired I am almost finished with one
thing left—chirp chirp chirp—don’t you
think it’s silly to fear things like dying?

1. I saved every voicemail, every scrap of paper with his handwriting on it. I tell myself I can hear his voice if I need to, but I never press play.

2. I wander through grocery store aisles just to breathe, pretending he’s in the next one over, maybe buying coffee or reading the ingredients on a jar. For some reason, that always helps.

3. I scream in my car at red lights. I’ve never been so angry at the sun for setting every night like nothing happened.

4. I buried parts of myself in every place we used to go. Now, I can’t go anywhere without feeling like a stranger to myself.

5. I sit in the back pew of an empty church, not praying, but just sitting. I don’t believe in heaven, but sometimes I wish I did.

6. I avoid every single song he liked, convinced the lyrics will tear a new wound open. But at 3 a.m., I press play anyway.

7. I tell stories about him as if he’s still here. I change the endings, make them happier than they were. Sometimes, I even believe my own lies.

8. I keep his picture on my dresser but turn it around on hard days. I know he’s gone, but I can’t stand the look on his face when I’m like this.

9. I grieve him every morning when I wake up and realize it wasn’t all just a dream. And I grieve him every night when I lie down, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it will be.

Mommy! I saw you watching me last night
Peeking ‘round the corner
Trying to make sure
I didn’t do
What you had told
Me not to

Mommy! I had seent you standing in the door
While I played in the yard
I was trying real hard
To make sure
You didn’t hear
The bad words coming out of my mouth
When them boys from down the street
Cheated

Mommy! I heard you callin my name
When I was asleep
I’m glad you did though
Cause the house was real hot
And I couldn’t hardly see
Every body said I was lucky
Cause I coulda died and stuff

Mommy! I heard you clapping for me
When I said my Easter Speech in church
The basket was real pretty and you
Said my dress made me look like a anjul
And that you were real proud of me and stuff

Mommy I tried to tell granny and them
About what you told me about my Easter dress
And about how proud you were
And about how you woke me up in the fire
And about using bad words
And about doing what I’m told
Bout how I see you every night
And bout how you sing me to sleep
And wake me up for school
And bout how you always know where
The stuff is that I thought was lost
But they all look at me funny
And say I’m sweet
Granny just tells me to go play
She tells all the grown folks that
I don’t understand
About death