Wolves and Their Keepers

  

He gives me something I've never seen:

Pictures of his daughters, dark hair shaded by hats

Blue dresses brilliant as the sky above us.

They seem to float, their legs blacked out in hose.

Of course his daughters float.

He leaps over the waves, even with human joints,

Muscles smooth as a fish.

Laughing. Howling at the sea itself.

And he thinks that this red linen

Means that I'm lost on the path, not walking it

With a blessed bow beneath my arm.

Keeping my own daughter's vows. Pelts or pack.

Into whose net will the fishes leap?

Sharing with the The Sunday Muse, probably...and Poets and Storytellers United, maybe. This week has felt dedicated to the furies rather than the muses. After a minor offline meltdown occasioned by social media, I left a writing group filled with people whom I care about rather than pruning my feeds for my own mental health. And I'm still angry. But the rants don't make poetry for me. They just jam up the cortex, run reckless over all the words, and stomp off to the back of the throat. 

Anyway. 

Hope that your writing is going well this week! 
--Chrissa

Basket Prompt 6/17/2020

My basket is full of first chapters, first lines.
I'm sorry, authors. You deserve a present attention.

My basket is too full of tiny breath checks,
 anxiety surging as if driven by axial tilt and
satellite gravity. They spill over in gasps and snaps.

My basket has no room, right now,
for your chant of freedom and bravery
because I am not brave enough
 To march to a bookstore or a mall
or my parents' house
as if to battle.
Not even to the lines of actual conflict.
I am cowardly enough to retreat to the porch,
stuffing hugs from the dogs into this
half-written notebook,
turned away from consumption.

My basket is full of the dystopia I won't read.
This is the wretched spun satellite, bristling with the guns
trained by the baffled leadership to
cross-stitch their slogans on the bodies of others.
In the grim, gaunt, castellated bunker
On the dystopia moon, the tapestries are us,
but we all are fitted with his visage so that he can own our stories.

My basket doesn't have--perhaps I never went deep enough--
asphodels from the Gate Beneath.

The furry moth Pandora found starves, gnaws a hole, flies out.
Hope has to be a moth to live in the dark.
I burn citronella.

My basket doesn't have room for forward motion,
not even for a die-cast car pulled back to leap forward.
Forward is sideways:
a sparrow waiting for sunflower seeds before the flower blooms.
Dial another day around the green,
let the sun leave a message in the basket.

My basket is full.

Wishing you plenty of room for hope & forward motion in your basket this week!

-- Chrissa

Inheritance

"Perfect Balance" Surreal Art Photography by Luisa Azevedo

Uncle Andy told us--like he called, but we were out--

He'd already shipped it, he's flying next week,

So he left a message.

Like he never does. Left the package, too.

Something for the house. Like I'd done an upshot,

Three posts and all those likes, but we didn't ask,

Not for one freaking dish. Not for this deer thing.

He stole the fake buck from a Bass Pro Shop

That closed after the pandemic? During the pandemic? 

He'd been waiting for a call for an interview

Got in his car, maybe he'd had an argument

With some guy at the shop were he was just

Working Until, you know?

He ended up at Bass Pro. 

They were clearancing it. Whole shop.

Everything closed back then. Or they were just shifting

To the pop-shop or they were just about to.

I don't know. 

Anyway, he walked in. Used to go there with his grandparents.

Saw it already in pieces. Just stuffed it in his car.

His Dad--Uncle Grandad K, yeah? He thought it was dumb.

But then they decided to make the table. Glass and sea

Like something from YouTube. 

One last father/son project?

I don't know what it was like back then.

But we opened up the box and there it was:

Some dumb buck table with all those fake plastic fish

Uncle Grandad K got at Hobby Lobby, clearanced. 

Uncle Andy thought he'd taken us, once. 

Corner lot, up near Houston.

Didn't we go camping in the indoor retail park?

Hunted wild boars in the suburbs?

We've never shot a goddamn thing, but I guess

We've all got to remember.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. 

I do not support a violent state that requires fear and provides further fuel to hatred. I do not support a man who believes strength is based on the abasement of others. I do not believe in lies. I am not ashamed of imperfection. I do not believe that ethics and wisdom are measured financially.  

-- Chrissa

 

The Road Ahead

WordCrafters Prompt:  The Road Ahead

It's raining on the highway outside Winnie, Texas

Cows are chewing their way to the shade outside Brenham

Stephen F. Austin is staring across 288 to the prairies,

All the way to the Brazos. 

Tires hiss and whisper, picking up the gossip of the semis

Long berthed in the bays behind Joske's and Foley's.

I'm staring at the grass; listening to a/c and the hum

Motion in my eyes.

Roads lie fallow in the dreaming afterward

Waiting for the grass to split their old skins

Night Light

Night Light

Sign of the night when the lights emerge
Trading day shadow for white diode blush;
Even in the stillness the dill head bobs,
Dancing to a felt but unheard tune.
I'm going to stand toe to blade at concrete's edge
Where the yard lies invisible beyond the gazebo
Memory like a breeze under the humidity,
Lifting nothing but hairs at your ankles and wrist.
Dive into the past with the drop of an eyelid,
Bend of the neck. The day has left its dark square
To be buffed by the night lights and the moths.

The Vestibule Before the Door

Painting by Surrealist Artist Alexandra Dillon

I guess what they wanted was Bluebeard, the lurid and the louche
Where the omens were wicked and the whispers slithering;
Marriage like a scoop for the dirt of life swept up by silk.

They barely look at the vow--don't think I can't see what
I can't say.

And they want strength because they come to me ask for it,
For the courage to Not Open the Door, because he's here,
Already in the house, already telling them the kind of stories
About how power is beautiful and how they like to stand in the ocean
And let the waves hit them, right? Between the legs, right?
That's why there is only the hand, with the vow, and the eye here,
In this not-yet-forbidden vestibule.

Because I liked power, too, didn't I?

You can't say what sacred layers the vow will set its edge against.
You can't say what witness will be borne to how they twist them.

Will you stand there and tell my story? Of pirates and weddings . . .

But the ring was only mine from a line of blindness
And what I swore was that I would never look away;
If I could only wear the comfort, I'd be the honest one.
And I am. Sharp and aware and wedded to the long view,
Lies becoming stories, forgotten but smooth, and power?
It rolls madly over and leaves something shiny behind.
Could be blood. Could be diamonds. Could be you.

So...witness. Speech. Silence. Comfort. The edge of the cliff or the knife or the line. Or the edge of the storm. We're fortunate in that another early hurricane will be missing our city, although it will pass through other damaged cities and flood other previously drowned communities. There is only the exhaustion of catching one's breath, holding it, and then waiting for another wave to come. Sharing with The Sunday Muse and with Poets and Storytellers United and hoping that everyone finds a place to rest and catch their breath in the coming week. 

--  Chrissa

Pressure Wave

Today's prompt was "Flaming June" -- being inspired by the heat of summer or Frederic Leighton's painting (below).

Bring the thick and sleepy air close to your throat
Tuck it beneath your head, the beginning of heat;
I will remind you when to wake by the darkness
Chilling your toes, the cloud-woven coolness.

What the heat singes bronze and melts golden,
Our dragon's breath dream of days pouring from
My furnace into fondant-solid calendar squares
Sweet on your tongue? This is the heat-shimmer.

Where the sky lays bare, blue nude to the sun
Find your own shade, your own shifting coverlet
Where the shadows are restless as you are
Dreaming of the streets drowning summer traffic.


Down where the blind goblins watch the world
Drink itself burning beneath the sea
I'm waiting for you to remember the summer
Flaming above and below.

And because we were also talking about anger and I've been thinking about the ways that I tend to feel like it's an inappropriate emotion to express (generally...there was a lot of girls-shouldn't-be-loud when I was growing up)...I've been daydreaming about my own rude, loud, and ridiculous garage band. :) Because who doesn't sometimes want to yell at strangers for hours on end? Totally healthy impulse.  

Angry Onion Eyes (both the lead single and my imaginary screamo band)

You must have been kept in a
ROOT CELLAR
Make your mind go blank and your
TONGUE SOUR

You must have been found in a
ROOT CELLAR
Dry layers concentrating on their
BITTER

You must have been raised in a
ROOT CELLAR
Make my eyes go acid and my cheeks
REDDER

Gonna leave you there in your
ROOT CELLAR
Shriveling down back into dark
MATTER

Miss you guys. And am hoping the weather stops throwing tantrums on Wednesdays. Perhaps it needs to join a band?

-- Chrissa