Magic flowed a river of printed words
meandering across ivory pages
passing up through grazing finger tips and
pulsing along a bloodstream
traveling deep into lungs and then
as air molecules flowing upward and
out
his mouth between full lips.
Magic coursed into the space between us
as a river delta, pouring water into the sea
where I bathed in the warm current of
each magic word
he read to me.
Author: Lindsay
For My Nephew
You are not my own
Yet I held myself
When I held you.
Stars freckle your sky face
Freckled like your mother
That which I do not share.
Nor do I have
Your turned-up nose.
Your azure eyes
We all have.
Light on a torch
Beaming back.
Your eyes
Your mother's eyes
Your grandmother's eyes
Your great-grandmother's eyes
(whose I still see so clearly)
The light she carried from others who said
"Bonjour" and "Au demain"
"Ferme la porte!" and "Je t'aime!"
A Cavern of Mirrors / Origami
Thoughts and images fill my head but don't connect to the words and phrases that would leave my mouth and connect me to you. So I sit, a cavern of mirrors, reflecting my thoughts onto myself, and only myself. My arms fold against my chest and start the forever inward folding, away from you, away from what I want. I look like an asshole when the words elude me. My forged bravery is a sham, and I am now all alone in this room.
Spring II
I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning
With the sun shining through my eyelids
Before I even knew I was awake
And my ear angled just right
To hear the feather-winged chatter
That I so missed during the months
of wading in drifted snow
(with my head down,
looking for something lost,
though I’d long forgotten what I was searching for)
Today I will meet everyone at their eyes
Though I know
Spring is a fickle lover
For this moment
I am choosing bliss
Spring I
Spring is late
Winter’s suffocation
Lingers into April
No daffodils to be seen
NYC bound
The bus rolls onward
And everything
Is dead outside
Cautionary Advice
This woman always
Poured her cup
Full with fragrance:
Lavender, jasmine
And somedays
Roasting rooibos.
In passing one day
She whispered to me:
Be careful where
You steep your soul.
That boy there
Is acrid brine.
You don't want to
Make yourself
A pickle.
Monday’s prompt on dVerse was to wrote a quadrille (a poem 44 words in length) containing the word steep or any of its forms.
Link to dVerse prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/28/quadrille-72/
Featherweight
We spend our winters building hardened resistance
Through the routine of shoulder hunching and thickening blood
As gradually the filtered light that shifts
Across wood panels and kitchen tiles
Lingers into longer hours.
Without cognizance, we let fall
Our experiences, as a dog
Sheds its winter coat
Throughout
Each houseroom.
Leaving our
Convictions as paper scraps to be
Swept up with toast crumbs –
and our tear drops
for mopping.
Never knowing the
Featherweight
Of our skin
Until it is.
And we stand
Pondering
The swiftness of
Transformation.
This poem was written for the dVerse prompt given by Lillian on Tuesday to write a poem containing a form of the word shed. https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/22/shed-some-light-on-this-today/
Somewhere in This Universe
Somewhere in this universe there exists an us
Laughing on the infinite shores of a thousand glittering diamonds
All bronzed skin and limbs under a late summer sun
// He Was Once a Stranger //
And there you were
In glasses black and t-shirt blue
Cradling my spirit
In the embrace of your smile.
In the first five seconds that we met
I completely entrusted myself to you.
The Edges of Your Jeans’ Pocket
You stole the shirt
from off my back
when we were seven
(when we were seven)
as we played in the field.
You caught a butterfly
and pushed a pin
through its head,
slowly, wings beating.
Then tacked it to a mat
to peer at under your
Kmart scientist’s special scope
I had said no.
(I had said no).
Dinner called us home at dusk.
I shrugged on my grass-stained shirt
and you crumpled the butterfly
into your jeans’ pocket.
Your fingers leaving mud
that dried like blood
and crusted like pus
on the edge’s of your jeans’ pocket.
My Swelling Heart 