I like you
underneath the name
and bones that poke
like questions.
You sit too close to me,
knees remembering the spring
and making me ask
why you never let
my skin make yours
a memory.
I will find you again,
hunched over poetry
your eyes holding court
over what blooms
beneath.
Attention Walmart Shoppers by Poetrymann, literature
Literature
Attention Walmart Shoppers
Each corner of the place
tells me to turn back
(it seems there was an upset
somewhere in aisle seven
right behind the tramadol and tampons
you slid discretely
in your purse.)
Why would I judge you
for that coffee in your hand
or the taste
of rampage left hiding on the shelves?
The stock boy stares at your legs
as you push your cart
past a mother
heaving chlorox
and her babies
in a basket
and wonders if one day
he too will grow into
a man who can
love dangerously.
The cashier
smiles at me
hungrily, fingers cupping coins
into my palm,
my lettuce wilting
in the strange buzzing light.
What strange currency
exists between the tides -
the murmur of
something bronze and round
imprinted gravely with the day,
and thin sheets of seaweed
curling up against my feet.
A mermaid's purse,
black and withered,
dwelling in these rocks -
and the bright
riviere of whelk
and conch to
cross the palms of selkies
in the mornings;
the glistening sail
in men of war-
lapis blue veiled
and veined just below the surface,
as one slick whisp of silver
darts between my fingers
and drifts into the
current.
She decided to be a tragedy
because it was more beautiful
than happiness.
Happiness was a plain thing -
ordinary and drab as corn or
her husband
falling asleep in his chair..
But tragedy was elegant - the curves
of her slender body sheathed in trauma
and kid gloves that went up to the elbows.
It was mysterious - black hats with veils
and notes from strange men pressed into her palm
at funerals.
Tragedy looked good on resumes and fit perfectly
on the small white cards placed on her dining table.
Her sisters could slip them into their purses
to remind them later of how she breathed
dignity and grace into the family name.
She c
Take me to the wild
wide edge of blue
and I shall dream of angels,
arms tapering into clouds,
and women in white
and the moths' soft mouths
that mock my oaths.
I shall sleep among the stones
and the pale trees
that grow beneath the ground -
like giants swallowing the dusk.
And I shall find her
tall and waiting
in the ruins,
the billow of her skirt
an island,
her eyes lit like candlemass
against the leaves and petals
streaming through the mist.
September's but a whisper,
a curl of autumn
on your cheek
or a wanton leaf
left lazing
in the tawny gold
of dusk;
and the amber scent
of pears,
succulent and slumbering,
slips idly
off your skin
and sends my restless senses
yearning...
Something slow and arcane
culls this fire
and flares like ghosts.
It stirs your soul,
splits the iris of your eye,
a spectrum to haunt October -
ruddy gold and rust,
followed by a dark so smooth,
it smothers embers
and roosts upon the river,
too deep to drown you.
And in the depths -
molten brown
muddles silt and pine,
witches' brew of
tar voiced stones
that glint
and hold you down
like amber.