Cracked Love
Earth brings people together
As it decides to break from itself.
Such a beautiful, twisted love.
Earthquake.
Mary Gabis
Preserves
we finally ran out of summers you
could keep in mason jars
on your shelf
and every time I remember something I
am just remembering the last time
I remembered it
the last of the home-canned
tomatos are emptied
into the soup and
it won’t be long until
we forget the flavor
of 2013
Francis Marion State Park
My head is not the perfect fish body.
You’re more than a tamarack, more
than heat and hair and hostility
toward your body. I’m more than
a trip North, more than the finality
of divorce, more than the name
I wanted back so badly. Your snout
shrank. Now you only have a nose.
But I can still feel your coil–
copper and gold.
Black
8/5/17 10:19pm
Black
I’ve been bargaining for loss
Switched it left to right
The slight of hand
Swapped a name in place
of what could’ve been a grave.
Still you’ve stayed just inside the edges.
The finger-less gloves
within one state
either direction.
You’re still the extension of me
blood leaking from the same vein
Inky and familiar
My sticky home.
I’ll never have to say goodbye.
You’re designer draped
shaped to fit my skin.
It’s chewed into a name
That I’ll carry til the end of my days.
You have a proper family
roads traveled in opposite directions
But the earth is round and you’re always driving
right back to yourself.
My chest meets at the crest
sunlight peaking through the spaces
You’re holding my hand through it all.
Homecoming and knowing
That we’ve never left.
Prompt# 16 Alladin’s jinn
I am Jinn the jeanie
Who hid her weenie
In her jeans
and waddled in
smiling
into everybody’s dreams
They kept me bottled in
didnt let me find
the free-way
to escape
from the lamp’s tunnel
at the end of which
I held the light
Then Alladin happened
he rubbed me the right way
and she manifested
herself
like a giant who loomed
over every element of nature
and bent
the air, wind and water
to fulfill his wish
and when he wished for the princess
she knew he sinned
for he saw through her candour
and loved through her sins
my giant cross-existence
in guise of a jinn
ended.
Requiem for ice cream
The sun,
Harsh, unforgiving, on my face,
Scorching my arms,
Legs,
Every inch of exposed skin reddened, sore.
I spy the ice cream shop across the street.
I enter.
I order a double mocha ice cream on a sugar cone.
It’s as expensive as any ice cream in the city,
(Really fucking expensive; like ten dollars or some shit).
I exit the shop and lift the cone to my mouth.
I do so too quickly; the ice cream is already melting.
It falls from the cone,
It struggles to reach the ground through the heat
(At least that’s what it seems like).
And my heart breaks.
Watching that ice cream,
That beautiful, ten-dollar fucking ice cream,
Fall offensively slowly
To splatter on my pant leg.
Hour seventeen
Each year I write one prompt devoted to a cliché topic, previously these prompts have been focused on love, death, and angst.
This year the challenge is to write a poem about loss that is not cliché.
Respect
By Patricia Harris
Alone, I trusted,
Unconditional acceptance
Of the idea that we were
Always meant for
Eternity…
Betrayal of my trust,
Pretending that it was right
That you are true
Before I knew that you
Were a figment
Of the imagination,
Through and through.
Achilles’ Flame
I saw him yesterday at the creek
Talking with his mother
As she gathered shells
For his necklace.
Achilles had many a flame.
I was just one maiden, fair enough
To have caught his eye
At the celebration
Of the solstice.
More than me, he wanted fame.
Never spoken of in myth, this peasant
Whom he loved as much
As the young temple
Priestess that day.
I would have borne his children.
Or so I was told by the Goddess;
His mother of ancient times
And mystical plays
Who lives far away.
He sits on the thrones of Heaven.
Prompt seventeen
I stare into the mirror
Afraid of what I might find
The angel on one shoulder
Or the devil in my mind
When the devil shows her heart
I find it hard to look
Because I know the angel quit
An easy loss she took
She fought for a minute
To keep good graces
Lazy angel
The devil wins again
But what do we expect
Its Saturday night
The bar isn’t closed quite yet
Last Yesterdays
Scars from 18 years ago
mark your shoes.
The lost yesterdays
sing tunes –
you’ve forgotten the words.
Dirt devils skip down
that sidewalk you once walked.
A penny looks up from the dirt —
1973.
I found you there lost in the tomorrows
you had not yet dreamed.
Looking at today through eyes
of youth
and age.