un-me

she's me
hyper-extended
unfolding
from me
bending
into her
self
what she
will be
(not me)
un
creasing
in
creasing
an
un
ceasing
tapestry
of
gossamer
fire
freckles
steel
wild
flower
fairy
wing
it's she
I sing

she
free
un-me


This poem also offered as part of this week's One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry.

sins of the fathers

He used to cruise real slow downtown, top down, tan arm shrugged across the steering wheel, jet black hair like greased lightning crawling through a desert sky.

It was '68 and the war was on.

So Uncle Sam packed his greased lightning and landed it under rocket's red glare in a hemisphere full of syllables and enemies he couldn't get.

And he would crawl real slow, elbows down, helmet down, black gun shrugged across his shoulder through a jungle paradise lost. He found Jesus there and brought him back in a tin canteen and poured his jet black blood into a coagulated me and I can't, I still can't, bleed it out.

This poem also offered as part of this week's One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry.

miscarried

you were asleep
I tell myself
when the time came
I had rocked you that way
and it was clinical
you have to know
even though I'd named you
secretly.
I came to, after
and you
didn't
and
every Spring
I draw
a warm blood-
bath
for myself
for you
to remember
that you lived
in me
died
in me, and you have to
believe me
it wasn't my fault
I miscarried
you

Belle Isle Station

the tin whisper
of the chain link fence as we climbed
you
hopped down just as the fly of my jeans grazed
over the top
there was no moon

splintered blue-collar stairs
up a three-story skeleton
to a tar-paper roof under a blackout sky
the spark of your Zippo
an arc
in the dark above
the dark
abandonment of the abandoned
electrical plant

and I, knees-bent beside you and
buzzing
with every incandescent drag
that lit up your sky
brighter than Belle Isle Station ever did
brighter than I
never did


This poem also offered as part of this week's One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry.