Violet's Poise

Violet's vexed
by scars and scrapes;
Violet sashays
on bruised shins.
Violet snags her skirts on her high heels.

Violet is a stranger in her skin;
she batters both her elbows, all ten toes,
into the furniture,
the floor.
Are Violet's shoes a smidge too wide?
Is Violet’s vision crooked?

No.
Violet failed to grow
into her bursting woman's body.
Violet wears adulthood
like a fruited, feathered hat.
Violet wears maturity
like water wears the moon--
scintillating, flimsy,
gravitational.

Changelings

We lurch into a shroud of dewy rain,
distorting Greyhound windows into green
and brown oil-paintings flecked with sheep.
The clotted air, our faces dull as stone
give allusion to an older age;
even the young smell ancient on this isle.

Although we move as one, we're each an isle
within our heads; our thoughts fall soft as rain
and trickle down into a distant age
of Lughnasadh upon the hills of green,
of tribal dances, bonfires, and of stone-
walled castles, each besieged with sheep.

Along the narrow road lie six dead sheep,
their bodies fertilizing dirt. This isle
is but a floating, life-encrusted stone,
and stones push up in graveyards in the rain--
fixed and ashen gardens-- while the green
grass sprouts and fades, age after age.

The rocky shores and fields seem without age,
touched only by the placid drifts of sheep
that snip the narrow tips of blades of green.
Below the sheep, the dirt, the Emerald Isle
lives timelessly, and only drops of rain
will touch the fae that doze beneath the stone.

We study, analyze, and turn to stone
these living sprites and nymphs of ancient age,
while we, the flesh and blood melt into rain,
fade into shades. We're changelings here, and sheep
one day will tread over our wings; the isle
has drawn us all beneath the stone, the green.

The transformation now, from grey to green
is etched upon our faces, chiseled stone.
And when our ashen bodies fly the isle,
our spirits, far beneath, will cease to age.
Although we leave the ocean, leave the sheep,
at Lughnasadh we'll dance in Irish rain.

And still the Emerald Isle, veiled in green,
washes her fae with rain beneath the stone,
till changelings rule the age... along with sheep.

Ode to an Old Book

The words are wearing
from your spine
in sober gradient,
resolutely raven at the opening “S,”
but trailing to a barely-brown
just fifteen letters later.
Still, your hardy spine supports
six-hundred pages,
yellowing and smelling of vanilla,
dust, and antique sweat.
I thrust my nose
and lips and cheeks
into the lusty center of you,
gasping like I might inhale
the very punctuation
set upon your grainy paper.

Violet Fades

Violet wears pajama pants
her mother bought,
Pooh Bear and honey pots
bunched into his torpid palms.
Her arm disentangles
to tap the remote,
digital chatter to drown
out the scuffle
of fabric and flesh.
Green-white light washes
out his face, as he leans,
more than friends,
over Violet's sighing mouth.
This isn't what she wanted.
So, as her body—
feral, fickle— yields,
Violet fades away.

Later, Violet builds herself
a memory,
shiny, with the scent of new plastic.
Violet rested just her head
upon his lap,
and his cool, broad hands stroked
just her hair.
And when the movie ended,
he leaned, her friend,
over her smiling mouth,
to brush
just a butterfly kiss
between her eyes.

Christmas Memories

On your knees,
you blew
brown-yellow chowder
onto my parents' front porch
where it froze,
vomit sorbet,
into the snow.

My father, armed
with the same metal
shovel used to scoop
puppy shit,
hacked,
chipped and scraped for hours
at the Picasso puke splatter
until the blade bent.
Still, your frozen fucking upchuck
stuck,
and the dogs lapped at it
like a holiday treat.

I have hacked,
chipped and scraped for hours
at the putrid memory of you
until my eyes burn
and my chest throbs.
Still,
you stick.

Ruin

As my knees
plunged to kiss
grimy carpet,
and my chest heaved
with strangled sobs,
the barren air buried us,
Trouble and I,
and his long, wet
teeth penetrated my
flesh.

They dug me out
with pressure and pills,
chemicals scraping away
at the dense, ashy layer
of nothing,
until I burst,
grains of loneliness lodged
in the corners of my eyes,
into the light.

They found a few traces,
but Trouble had fled.

Still,
there is a twinge
below my ribcage,
a nauseous little roiling
in my gut.
Something grows there
with tentacles,
blind eyes, and long, wet
baby teeth,
which no white pill
will swallow up.

A Yellow Tulip

With weary grace
you lean,
green, like
the dying sigh of spring,
over the bottle's glass lip.
Three long leaves enfold your slender stem:
two, the dainty swell of rabbit's ears,
lightly creased from root to tip,
one, a flat, exhausted tongue of
rubber husk,
tasting the tabletop.
Your hollow yellow blossom
thin, like finespun silk, but
crisp as dewy cabbage
tilts its wide mouth earthward as though
huffing out its candle.