Author: poetryfest

My DNA inches up my throat, settles into my teeth, and coats my tongue like rancid honey.
I’m too deep into her fantasy.

I was just a kid, jailed behind shins, hiding from the brightly-lit mirror.
What made me seen now erases.

Call it self agency or decay, it’s easier to play danger, test the weight of her flame,
whose fumes might as well be bone, stoic and honest.

I translate my mother’s fear on my face
like lead shadows left on an effaced page of broken hypotheses.

I have reinvented her as a scientist.
She still holds me to the light like an ossified insect.

To be read while listening to Delta’s hold music

Welcome to Delta. Your call is important to us…
well kinda.
Honestly, this could take a while.
You see, all of our agents are currently unavailable
because today is the annual picnic
at our Malaysian call center.
They are just putting the finishing touches on their model sailboats
for the big race this afternoon.

Welcome to Delta.
Did you know you can go book yourself?
Just go to Delta.com and select the option to go book yourself
and you can get off this phone an on with your life.

Welcome to Delta.
To reach a customer service agent
simply draw a triangle of crushed brimstone
stand inside it and spill the blood of 3 virgin pigeons
a gateway will open beneath you
and an agent will be with you shortly.

Welcome to Delta.
We are currently unable to receive your call
because our Malaysian call center just received information
of a shipment of illegal orangutans
being smuggled offshore.
Our agents are currently cutting escape holes
in the shipping container with blowtorches
and will be with you as soon as the mission is accomplished.

Welcome to Delta.
Have you heard of Delta’s new Delta Green® Climate Smart travel initiative?
Simply cancel your flight to offset its carbon emissions
and Delta will send you a VR headset
pre-loaded with the experience you were going to have.
Why fly all the way to Nebraska for your family reunion
just to hear your uncle get drunk and start saying homophobic shit
when you can live the experience from the comfort of your own home?
Flying to Costa Rica for your honeymoon
only to catch COVID on the flight and get stuck in a hotel airport for 2 weeks?
Delta can help you save the hassle…
and the planet.

Welcome to Delta.
Did you know you can also book yourself in our app?
Go to http://www.delta.com/bookmeintheapp
to find out what customer satisfaction
means to Delta.

Welcome to Delta
All of our agents are currently unavailable right now
because after their brush with adventure on the high seas
they realized how lucrative orangutan smuggling can be
and have decided not to return to our call center.
We believe they have commandeered the smuggling vessel
and are somewhere heading north in the South China Sea.
If you have any information as to the whereabouts of our agents
please call us immediately at
1-800-GO-BOOK-YOURSELF

And can you feel his love
on your bruised body
do you like the air he breathes/ into your chest
of cigarettes and profanities
the taste of alcohol
As he takes off your panties
his anger pumping through you
who made you, his love, fool

wanting this way

i can’t believe every door i open leads back to this attic. a rusty door, a squeaky door, a set of French doors, the Monsters Inc. door, a door you have to throw your shoulder against to shove it open, a door that feels like it will splinter right off its hinges if you twist the knob just so. all lead back to the place where you twisted me at unnatural angles and strung me up amidst the cotton candy insulation fiber. you are spooling out the threads of my skeleton slowly, so slowly that it doesn’t ache in the moment — but over time i notice my body beginning to fold in on itself as it unravels. if you made me into a blood eagle it would be more romantic, i think.

i’ve always hated menthol cigarettes, but now i exclusively buy them because they taste like the inner right corner of your mouth. like growing stale, not old, together. i pray with every inhale that they will be the thing to make my brain bleed and burst rather than your soft, battered body curled up inside my skull and raging to get out. please put the machete down. i promise i want you gone just as much as you want to remember the taste of fresh blood and fresher air, but my brain is the one fucking place that doesn’t have a door for some reason. i went to the doctor in hopes that they’d assault me with a stethoscope and tell me my problem was arrhythmic fibrillation and early onset schizophrenia instead of stale insulation fiber for a heart and a voluntary thought pattern that would
make Schrödinger’s stomach turn. but i sat alone in the operating room for six years because the office door only ever opened to that damn attic. put the fucking machete down.

I’m trying,
I’m tired,
Heavy eyes,
Dragging limbs,
Bubbling resentment,
Burning anger,
I do not remember
Joy.

I’m trying,
I’m tired,
Pretend positivity,
Longing laughs,
Suffocating panic,
Helpless,
I perform
An award-winning act,
I shall continue
Till the mask
Breaks.

I’m trying,
I’m tired
Of chasing perfection,
Excellence escapes my grip,
Perfect performer,
Deceiving illusion,
Praying for someone
To see right through it.

I’m tired
Of trying
To keep fixing
My mask,
Tired
Of praying for help,
Pleas
Falling on deaf ears,
Perfection achieved
Through deception.

I do not remember,
I cannot remember,
Why can’t I remember?
Joy.

Escaping hope,
Consuming fears,
Tired……

I cannot
Anymore.

This is not morning, evening or any time at all.
The dial on the clock never changes,
watches stopped the second
I didn’t live here anymore.
A nine-year-old friend who died at twenty
plays wiffle ball in the yard with me
near the tree brought down years ago by lightning
as an owl calls from the corner.
Only I hear it and feel what is lost.

The path is roughed rocks
pushed from the earth each spring
and ready to keep me upright
with their tenuous traction. But find one
too smooth, I slide between, my breath
catches on memory’s point
and leaves an ache too far
to be only another hunger.

Some things aren’t meant to heal.
I cross oceans as leaves on sidewalks swirl
and stones turn in the earth with my passage —
I dream of a home I know isn’t mine
but am too old to go back,
too young to do anything else.

Our worlds collided over a decade ago, you were three and our time together lasted minutes.
You were such a beautiful child, dark brown eyes against olive skin.
I wonder who you are today, what kind of adolescent you became.

I wonder if you are still alive.

I can still feel you stare, begging me to make the pain go away.
I can still see your skin coming off in clumps from the burns covering your tiny body.
I can still hear your screams, echoing in my ears for eternity.
And there is nothing I can do but hold your gaze.

I am so sorry.

Author bio

SGT Nate Didier was an Infantryman with C. Co. 1-133rd INF, 2/34th BCT deployed to Kosovo from 2007-2008 and Nuristan Province, Afghanistan from 2010-2011. He resides in Cedar Falls, Iowa and enjoys the outdoors, reading, and spending time with his children. He has previously been published in Culture Cult Press’ Spring Offensive: Poetry of Strife and Spring (2023) and the Right Hand Pointing’s The Law of Forgetting: Poems on Moral Injury (2023).

My heart fell out of my chest and into the void
As you fell out of my womb and into the toilet.
A feeling I’m afraid I will never forget
Every time I sit down.

How can blood be so painful yet so comforting?
Because it reminds me of you.
And when it’s gone, it feels like you will be too.
And I will be empty again.

Would it be disrespectful to women who birthed live babies
If I said I still feel like a mother?
Honestly, I don’t give a damn how they feel.
I don’t give a damn about anything that doesn’t propel me closer to you.
Thank you for showing me that their opinions don’t matter.

You were so innocent and pure, you knew nothing of the evils of man.
You never felt a broken heart, a moment of dissatisfaction.
You felt nothing but love and nourishment from my body.
So I know that you somehow understand
That I had to break myself into a million pieces so that you would never have to suffer.
So that you would never know what it’s like
To have two parents that just weren’t ready.

Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pieces of pottery,
Fusing them back together with gold dusted glue.
Showcasing the cracks instead of hiding them with translucent paste.
When a bowl breaks, does it know it will never be the same again?
Does it question its purpose
Now that it’s in pieces on the floor?
Does it know that its keeper still sees its worth and beauty?
“Please, don’t discard me!” It cries.
“I can still be of use in this world.”

Rio, my gold-dusted glue.
Lover, the hands that put me back together.
How can I ever thank you enough?
You knew I would break,
But I was none the wiser.

I want to live in this pain,
So I’ll never forget her.
I want to bleed forever,
So I’ll always remember.
Afraid of nothing except moving on,
Still I grit my teeth and push through.

I feel your wisdom all around me.
I feel you holding us in your hands,
Connecting us, bonding us.
The gold-dusted glue mending parts of us back together
That we didn’t even know could break.

“Her time has passed”, Doctor Heim said
“She’s still lovely.
My wife of 51 years.”
“Yes Ralph, Vickie was quite a stunner.”
Then a brief pause
“Well, I’ll be getting back to the hospital.
The coroner will be here soon.”
Then a brief pause
Ralph put on a record
The Begin the Beguine*
He lifted her lifeless body out of the bed
“Come dearest
Let me hold you in my arms again,”
He began dancing with her lifeless body
“Do you remember that night on the beach?
We walked naked
Suddenly you faced me
and said, “Now.”
Sex in the moonlight
Sex in the sand.”
Then a brief pause
Ralph resumed dancing with her lifeless body
“Yes dearest, good times.”
He danced and remembered
and whispered in her ear
Then gently lay her on the bed
The Begin the Beguine still played
He kissed her lips
“Goodnight dearest
I saved the last dance for you.”
Then a brief pause

—
* “Begin the Beguine” is a song written by Cole Porter (1891-1964) at the piano in the bar of the Ritz in Paris,
October 1935.