August
Another August hangs
like my dog’s fat, pink tongue.
To conserve my energy, I pronounce
only the consonants of words.
My legs are a pallid portrait
of a summer spent in hibernation.
A season of poems, Moon Pies and melancholy.
I prop my feet on the porch rail,
toes pointing in the direction of a hawk, circling.
If he flew closer, I would rise
to the cool flap of his wings.
He is searching the field for dinner.
He might get lucky tonight
and enjoy a fat mouse who slept too long
and cooked himself on a hot rock.
Across the street, my neighbor eyes me
in that way only an old woman can.
She holds her watery gaze
like a hunched commando staring down the enemy.
She has taken a throw rug hostage
and is beating it senseless
with her black and blue emotions.
The sky is a spasm of color
slashing orange welts across the Earth,
marmalade exploding on toast.
Love Invasion
I lay beside you, small
but volatile as a cannonball at ignition.
I am a rumble in the belly, a high-pitched hum,
my breath is shrapnel.
I am fractured to the nth degree,
there is little left of me.
The same body, the same electric current,
the featureless form that is me.
Through the spongy liquid blue,
I watch you peel away the sheets like a flap of skin.
Your morning breath surrounds me like viperous flies
feeding on a fleshy wound.
The mirror over the bed does not lie,
lie like me. The pillow is my lover;
it smothers each saint from my breath.
The Thread
This simple strand of thread
has seen more than I.
The trembling hem it held
in a young girl's wedding gown,
or the ragged frays of an old woman's apron.
We weave a careful garment
and prick the blood of love,
for it is easier to rest our weary fingers
than to thread the needle again.
​
(from Pegasus literary magazine)