Come Closer

Where X has locked the spot, preserved the fiction
That we are about to enter, about to know
Where she kept her chickens, where she kept her children...

There--

Lean against the hill's barn door.
You can hear the fiddles in the middle distance;
Someone must be dancing.

They say their rings are perfect and they gleam!
Dancers polishing a gold and concrete formation.
I hear that only the reckless see the fairies.

You could see mockingbirds and lizards
In dolls' waistcoats and old taffeta dresses--
Cold.

Maybe the scholars see the dead in them...but you,
You never read that last analysis of those old tales,
The one that tagged their toes with version numbers,
The one that racked them like a withered symphony.

Listen. It's all music, spinning like the spiders
In these old corners.
You've pulled your share of tunes to the ground,
Slapped a few concertos from the path.
Music is easy, music requires no detox.

Whatever you hear, come see.
What you fear, come be.

Let's just say that I am never the one who says "Let's stop at there and see what that's all about." I am the person who has Yelp open and is checking to see whether other people have eaten or visited and would return. I am the person who is more likely to say that something looks closed because I can't see lights through the smoked glass. You will not find me leaning against a barn door in the middle of nowhere trying to determine whether I know the song I keep hearing in the distance. Probably.

And I'm definitely the person who is thinking about a flash story about haunted Yelp reviews. :)

Hope you're having a non-haunted week and yet encountering a good run of stories. Sharing this one today with The Sunday Muse which is today celebrating the 50th prompt! Yea!! Thanks, Carrie for creating this engaging space to spend part of our week and please come join the community if you're so inclined.

-- Chrissa

Glory Seeds

There are myths spreading like fingers through sand;
Flowers that appear on the fences edging the playground
And you try to take them home, tame them.
Fill your dad's film canister with seeds, rattle them
All day in your desk, in your pocket;
Wait for the lawn mowers and morning glories
To tame and free the grass.

Sharing today with the Wednesday Muse. Today's theme is spring flowers and it feels that there are a million ways to go with this--the azaleas at Mercer (a personal favorite), Mom's azaleas and the fact I loved the blue color of Miracle Gro (not enough to touch it, just enough to watch Mom feed them), the smell of spring onions, the smell of the wisteria, the way a bee shows up when the wisteria blooms to police our front walkway (NOT where the wisteria is located), the smell of a blooming apricot at Mercer...I have, unfortunately, never seen a cherry blossom, which Toni describes so beautifully in the Muse. Therefore, today's spring verse refers to morning glories (technically summer blooms) in elementary school. Hope everyone has a lovely week! :)

-- Chrissa

Fairy Fruit

You came to me bleeding dye and belching butterflies
And I asked you what you've eaten, where you've strayed
While you stare toward that empty yard and murmur:

The shouts are melting in the rain, in the falling sky!
I'll wear the words I speak, bitter, salty, sweet...I'll wait
For the tongues of angels to drink me clean.

It rains! They are pouring colors on the trees, the grass;
All the broken wishes are pollinating the forest,
Blooming from my lips.

The squirrels flung fairy fruits at me all day.
Never are these sweet for those logical beasts
But I'll lick the broken rinds of dreams.

I am belching the indigestible hopes of caterpillars
All the ichor trails that we cannot swallow, that fruit
Bubbles from my lips.

Yards are never empty.

---
Not sure whether the squirrels are trying to help or not. Your thoughts? 

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United for their Sunday poetry mix. It's a good day for poetry and warm socks. :)

-- Chrissa

Five Lines

It's the green of the water and the small water lilies in the center
I imagine my arms stretched out, my body a dark arrow in dim water
The cool bars of shadow, safety; the silent liquid, home and skin
I imagine myself frog, the way I first learned to swim
Legs and arms bending and shoving, pulling me down and through

Sharing with The Sunday Muse--for Wednesday. There is no theme-i-ness here...only I had one of those I'd-rather-be-in-a-pool-this-morning moods. :) Also, the picture is not referenced in the five lines...I just like it. 

-- Chrissa

The Reader and the Read

The tiny black spider who comes from nowhere
To use your book as a ledge and the slowly shifting pages
As a series of caverns--she is
A word grown legs, crawling from one sentence to another
Before becoming fixed, again;
As if you were trying to keep the words in the book, the ink
Tentative against your fingers
But free.
Read her as she slips away, anchored to the story
As you have been
In the sunlight, in the breeze,
And the paper.

A Seasonless Song

Pull the spinning heart from the chest;
Sinatra...sometimes is doesn't stain...

It's dust, not blood, that spills
From the speakers and dials we couldn't reach
Under a hinged lid
When we used to stand in line for dinner,
Like a textbook photo, in the tiled entry
Of a strip center restaurant,
Washed by jazz
And the breath of summer asphalt.

But this throat and heart--
Sinatra on wax nerves unremembered--
Polish it until we decide
How to replace the music,
The vestigial turntable,
Those days.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse for a music-inspired prompt and with Poets United, which also began with a lovely hymn to rebuilding after war. I've been relying on music this week...we ended up having what seemed like simple repair turn into an ever-larger ceiling surgery...ergo, I've been sitting on the porch when I can with iced coffee and 80's music and watching the bees. Pretty sure I've become a semi-permanent feature on minor bee backroads. :) Pretty sure that's going to become a short story title at some point. 

Hope you're having a kind week & have plenty of chances to go outside and breathe for a few minutes, if nothing else. 

--chrissa

Stains and Whispers

I weave a wife's-nest above the weeds from vines that smell
Of cut grass drying in the heat,
Above the frog condos cut into the clay where they sing
Near the rain or end of the day.

I whisper wasps into a green plastic shed where they sting
Like the thorns roses sharpen in bed.
Berries fall tangy into stained palms from my spiny vines
Our tongues spread the green.

Cross-posting with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United. Looking forward to working up a spring herb garden but perhaps not looking forward to tackling our tiny backyard in terms of the moat that has developed and a concern about snakes after a poorly thought out decision to fill an old garden bed with unused pots and such...a poem, therefore, that wonders whether the whispers hinted at in the image are, perhaps, plots and gossip.

Meanwhile, waiting to find out what this mystery plant is. Picked it up yesterday at our local public garden's plant sale...it was unlabeled and tiny...and my writer's heart couldn't resist the possibilities. :) 

Hope you're having a green & growing (although not stinging) week! :)
-- Chrissa