Bullets
(Chosen as a first place finalist for the Belmont University Humanities Symposium Writing Contest 2021)
Some things I do remember: a busted
headlight, hot flame licking the frosted
blanket, broken beer bottles, no frame,
a box spring on the floor, but also smoke
stains, a bear, bagels, lazy purple rivers
flowing across the linoleum, a locked door,
an empty room; enemy lines ruminate on the olive
clad legs emulating the stain of envy or bile.
But how can your countenance be leveled
by sticky shot glasses if they’re stored
in the cellar, cloaked with cobwebs and suggestions
of citrus, supervised by calloused guardians of green
scenes camouflaged by screens of as seen on TV,
clear cups of solution not to be confused with spirits,
and slander that states shotguns only shoot
when society squeezes the trigger.
Cartridges soar instead towards crowds of sentinels,
babies secured to their sides like blades to columns
in the barn where I grew up, before I knew
the bite of tobacco and the contours of bullets.
Periphery Deception
Run, she says. Icicle eyes, the freeze of
fire. Fight, I say. Pinewood,
aftershave, clipped fingernails. These things I can’t live without,
the allure of soggy cheeks, locked seatbelts, shared passwords, sacrifice,
Martyrdom. A martyr for what? Biblical morality? Mutilated pipe organs?
Are they not the same? Is seduction not the culmination of heaven
and hell? Heat as pleasure, a single tendril tucked, but also as
peonies peeking from beneath coffins.
Like a wasted nod of the head, a forgotten glance
to the left. Periphery deception, she says. There is
more. More than the suffocation of a flannel in the desert
Buttons replaced with handcuffs, deadbolts,
padlocks. Paris in July, dripping with ladies in lingerie,
teasing men with hearts on lockets
locked to a bridge, securing M+N until
tomorrow. Tell me you see it, she says.
You’re still holding the key.
OBELUS // ÷
The obelus: a ubiquitous particle perfusing.
We perfuse with peonies wrapped in napkins.
Peonies that speckle our braids; drooping petals pattern the plaits.
We are drowning in a speckling of octopi and arachnids.
Artificial arachnids that curl against raised goose pimples.
Patches mask the pimples, painted blush, crumbling on spackle.
They sauté the walls in shades of eggshell as spackle slides off doorhandles.
Doorhandles that disappear in the delicate darkness of the noon nebulous.
Storms teeter on the horizon of a delicate decision.
The contents of dinner teeters in the empty space.
Tents are scattered in the contents of well-loved novels, dog-eared.
Well-loved dogs.
We treated the peonies as dogs spackled to the horizon.
They drown in the obelus with treated timber.
Tapping timepieces, alarming us of pimples and paint.
Treasonous saran-wrap warps well-loved darkness.
Egg Yolks Fried Pink
Coparenting is an art
of compromise which is an art
of sharing clothes and
coddling eggs and frothing
milk. A dot of ink on several slices
of birthday cake, layered
to dress the platter in pink.
The future of a signature rests,
balanced. Stability is an art in laying
eggs and swallowing upside
down, where up and below
are synonymous with weddings.
What’s old is made new, and what
is borrowed will be returned in the form of fried
tongues, dry still, in the encapsulating blue.
It is impossible to shrug
away the husband when babies act
as lawn ornaments for hillbillies.
Art is an art of knowing the difference
in delicacy and disposal.
Addressed to my soldier.
R5 stands barren,
Boasting ghost flames and
cabinets stained with
black billows.
You burned more than the walls:
tea lights, Hartsville
nights, sides of mountains
where the moon hung crooked
from the stars, blacked out Bibles,
studied pebbles, Percy Priest, pilfered time.
Do you remember?
We counted the weeks
as parachutes careening,
crashing, counting down,
to tumultuous ground,
to apartments that were always empty
of furniture, but not toothbrushes
or backpacks tethered together with string.
You told me that tan
boots were meant to be worn, and
sleeves to be adorned with soot
and patches and frayed
flags.
Do you remember?
Bayonets were baptized
on the floor of McMurray.
You burned more than the walls,
and I’m left smoldering
in the roaring wake
of rifle waves.
Revelation to Genesis
Epiphanies are palindromes for
Three leaf clovers
And dandelions post wish.
A perpendicular precipice
Leads to an epiphany: pupils peek into souls
Which peek into pallid pools of soda, slipping
From the stars.
A pitcher of sand sifts
Through pleading lashes, collapsing
Into collarbones, sparking epiphanies that coincide
With styrofoam cups and snapping off-beat and
Swerving to feel your stomach drop.
Save petals as a reminder to prepare your speech
For mothers who protect you from the acids
And blades which pepper the pulpit
Where she stashes her pearls
Bathed in perfume, baked under her tongue.
Epiphanies are palms pressed
To brows as well as photoluminescent
Beings present past the possession of sight.
We See
Syntactic synopses scatter
hazards fraught with figments
of oration, feathering at the fringe
of fact and freaks of psychotic statements.
We satisfy
aria arithmetic.
We seek
metric rhetoric.
We sway
to nonsensical sensations,
titillating our tinctures
of sweat and sinew.
Concoctions puddle
in shoes shelved
in couplets or crooked
on caravans headed only
out as a suffusion of continued
spittle from the tongue. We stutter
to suffice saturations of calligraphy,
but who can differentiate
silhouettes from statues
when smoke clouds salted
eyes. We cannot be sure
of streams
of which we cannot
speak.
We scatter
sunbeams that slant
to catalyze the uncovering
of crypts and catastrophes and
catatonia.
We scream.
We search.
We suffer.
Transcendent
We move to cerulean
caesuras, mocking melodies
stolen from melded affairs.
Interwoven affairs, interconnecting
continents and cracked paint
and collateral compliments.
Ligament language
like soft-spoken illegalities transpiring
beneath bruised beams.
We breathe to evade
invaders, our invocations light
on translucent fingertips.
We plead with salted
eyelids, dripping liturgy,
calling for calloused commitments.
Intermingling admirations linger
on wisps
of smeared shading.
We refuse to relinquish
silver rings, knotted sleeves,
and sneakers cast aside.
Bareness rebukes suppositions
of forgery, otherwise called newborns
slathered in soap.
And we resist the tick
of seconds but regret solitude
accompanied by crystallized closure.
If we coalesce in suspension,
only the spheres sacrificed
by stargazing can stop us now.
Pas Seul
Rituals quiver, crushed by
calloused vacillations.
Elastic energies, ravines of red,
vibrations, and veins, all ricochet off
salient scenes, contorting in
sequences of rhythmic gestures.
Then quiet.
Then continuity.
Elaborate expressions of stains
on feet and fingers, stretched
from end to end, rehearsal
to reverence, rise to rendition.
Improvisation imminent as soul
and body meld into one stanza.
Blackened beams court,
irregularly tumbling into the next
movement. Instinct is insatiable
when words remain evasive.
In The News
Lethargic gerrymanderer
gains land unbounded by
education. We writhe
in the devastation
of libraries over
flowing with landfills
gobbled up by explosions
of enlightenment. A moment
where gnarled tongues
curl coyly around shelves
of tabloids announcing
the collapse of the left
over leaning language.
Newfangled labels last
only the length of quivering
grade schools on the corner
of boulevard and lane.
They balance, breathless,
on blades of broken
bus stops.
Enslaved girls give
boys liberal
lust to garble their grasp
of left
and below.
The belated labor of slaves
mutilate our undulations
of latitudinal
gluttony.
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