Paperclips

Let us count the number of paperclips that we have placed in the shelves
Where the paper is kept and the water for the small fridge beneath the desk.
There are pens in boxes standing next to the binder clips but we counted these yesterday.
Next to me is a restless angel. It is mine, in that I have the training of it.
Where is the home? Where is the hearth?
There are wings dragging through dust already swept through.
The closet buzzes with leftover hallway lights.
We can hear the receptionist murmuring into the phone.
Where is our household? Sustained by this, I breathe.
A prayer that is more a placation--this brings us the paycheck,
And then the apartment, the food, the car.
We depend upon this closet, upon the way these pens never vanish,
The way the paperclips are always available, the way the paper
Is always laid to rest in the belly of the copier.
Restless angel follows after, brushing the sides of the hallway,
Blocking the doorway to a small office.
Why are we here?
This is home.
I check the stash of paperclips in the drawer. Trust in these.
Trust in the paper, in the staplers, in the flashing light on the phone.
Trust in the chapel quiet of the hallway, the open doors, the women
Who move along the corridors. Say they are nuns, say they are votaries...
I will say they are priestesses, the angel mutters. The lights buzz.
I will say you carry your home like a shell from the shore.
The drawer holding my purse shudders.
I will say that it takes decades to learn to turn your prayers
Into something like light and like incense and that I cannot relearn
What it means to keep such a house.

What You Don't Notice

It’s the shock of what you don’t notice—

A comment burning through the a/c firmament

Fading like wisdom from the edge of a pipe

Slow fall, slow burn, slow down.

What is light hungry for that it casts us stark,

glows until we have outlines dark

Against the hammer of sensation, there is sight—

And where it lives, is light.

What if we are not protagonist at heart,

Just the flash it strikes as it marks

A bumper from the goal, obstacle or blight—

We devour what it leaves behind.

What if we are pulse, beat, solid jar,

Only rhythm that deviates the dark?

It’s the shock of what you don’t know—

Ignorance blazing through cold comment

Catching like ashes in the park at night

Slow flame, slow walk, slow town.

So...this week's prompt (courtesy of The Sunday Muse & being cross-posted for The Muse #10) forked out of the gate, like lightning. One branch was related to a comment about seeing yourself in the background, rather than the foreground and the other branch remained firmly foreground. The poem relates to the first and I'm working on what the latter might become (perhaps just a welcome distraction draft as I try to get ready for unexpected guests over the 4th) ((what, don't tell me all your Christmas decorations are already put away)) (((no, really, don't tell me.))) ((((see, we were going to have a late Christmas with family and when that didn't happen...well...there is a pile of sad-looking decorations on a table in our den)))). 

In addition to the Muse, this is also cross-posed with Poets United for Poetry Pantry #408. Hope you're having a warm and sunny writing week and all your reading is escapist in the best way! :)

-- Chrissa

My First Language is Anger

A saint stands with palm to the heavens, birds nesting at the edge of his reach.

A saint conjures hope from the bottom of the box, feathers brushing his chest.

A saint opens his mouth, prayers and mockingbirds flock to the sunrise.

A saint with his back to me, with his knees to the tiles, arms, voice, heart

Rising like the dove, telling me the land is there, green and growing and waiting.

He speaks without dogma, his only habit his jeans and t-shirt.

He speaks to the window, to the room, to the birds he released.

He speaks to the storm and the flood and the collapse.

His faith rises on the spiral of my heat, on the unsolid cliffs I scream beneath the clouds.

His faith rises above the heat, into the solid softness of the clouds.

His faith rises above the palpable invisible.

His faith rises.

Sharing this poem this week with The Sunday Muse for The Muse #9. Sometimes--or many times, actually--it helps to see someone familiar in the template of the extraordinary. Although the pronouns in the above reflect what I see in the image (a boy reaching for a bird beyond the window), they shouldn't be taken as a limiting statement on who the saint could be. 

Best wishes for a good week of reading that shakes out all the dust and leaves you lighter than before. :) 

-- chrissa 

Do You Hear the Whispers?

When did they begin, when the heat kicked on the air?
Rumble, sigh, murmur, thick air damp with sound--
Whispers, Jeff, that rustle through the paperwork
While the machines wring the breath itself and you hear
Whispers, Jeff, outside the door and down the hall.
Your office smelt of summer salt and then it smelt of autumn.
Somewhere leaves are burning, Jeff, somewhere down the hall
Beyond the door where the water is dying, Jeff,
Beyond corridors dark as the night building, filled
With whispers, Jeff.
Until the smoke puffs through the vent and all the leaves
Are crackling likes the jaws of something surfacing upon
A field of bones and fire. Tell me, Jeff, are these the jaws
That whispered a little while before, the ones that sighed
As the damp drained off, the ones who parted to lick
All the leaves the swamp has left behind when the waters
Found their mercy, Jeff, and rose above the stink?
Something hungry came for all the leaves, burning
Underneath for just this piquant rottenness.
Do you hear the whispers, Jeff?
Do you hear the fire?

Once Upon a Plotter

We are the diagram of memory
pointed and filled by the days; DNA helix fueled by Dutch babies
our grandmother baked, rising like fairy tales
in the oil, in the iron casket on the stove--
Witch light, gas light, butter, dough, sugar.

She called me Marie,
gave me the several towers, tall, thin, topped by gold;
they flake into crumbs under my fingers.
I slide down gold bent from thunderclouds--
Witch light, gas light, butter, dough, sugar.

I run from her kitchen, free
On the bones she gave me; my own grand witch, still cooking.
Grandmother, namesake Marie,
stove flickering as she cooked castles--
Witch light, gas light, butter, dough, sugar.

Cross posting with The Sunday Muse (Muse #8) and Poets United (Poetry Pantry #406). I have been reading far too many fairy tale books lately. And, as the tales might be told, finding myself entirely too food-motivated while reading. :) Wishing you a lovely week filled with the best kind of fairy pastries--real, remembered, and read.

-- Chrissa

Upon a Piano

Open the piano for dusting. Who plays it now?
Old rags on their way to bookshelves,
Bored fingers who remember old songs like ballet positions
Until...
Percussive claws on ivory shelves, clutching old bones
While notes slip away, dripping like shadow mice
Away from eyes like sulfur coastal mornings.
Old patience.
Old songs.

Cross-posted with The Sunday Muse for Muse #7. This feels really rough to me...there are perhaps a few missing stanzas? I don't know. Perhaps this will reappear later. :) Thanks for reading!
-- Chrissa