Medium

I doubted my father would send communiqués through a
medium. But he turned up right on cue. The medium said Dad
was concerned about the frequency with which I wield “the
sword of injustice.” I knew exactly what he was referring to
having just called my neighbor a bitch. Dad went on to goad
me about my hypochondria. “Well,” I said, “if he’s joking that
must mean the cyst is benign.” The medium used an etch a
sketch. Every now and then I could hear him shaking it through
the phone. My uncle showed up. He was dancing. He didn’t
respond when we asked whether his son had been wrongly
convicted. A former neighbor appeared and reminded me that
I had once coveted her Pottery Barn rug, but, when pressed,
offered no explanation for the suicide. My friend’s husband
wouldn’t reveal whether he’d been poisoned, instead he spent
ten minutes describing his beloved Corvette.

This selection comes from the poetry book, Goodbye Toothless House, available from KATTYWOMPUS PRESS.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Body Farm*

Rise: The last
thing you ate
was a small smidge of birthday cake.
Fall: Now you swell
and molder on an army green tarp.
Rise: A raccoon raked
your chest open like a bag of potato chips last night
Fall: but sometimes
your sun-dappled breast still looks like it is….
Rise: While I
was watching, your neighbor, Number 27,
shimmied then popped his bloated tongue pressed into the ground.
Fall: I long to flick
the small spider traversing the length of your belly,
Rise: a monk pressing on
across the desert thirsty, but resigned.

This selection comes from the poetry book, Goodbye Toothless House, available from KATTYWOMPUS PRESS.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

This is a Man-fractured Land

Sidewalks replete with
roving red-eyes,
swindlers who swarm
our daughters, slip
into their ear buds,
caress their baby faces,
lull them into dreams of
the perfect
Still-life in Bloom.

This selection comes from the poetry book, Goodbye Toothless House, available from KATTYWOMPUS PRESS.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Hospitals are Great Places to Visit

1. You do not want to enter but she has you by the throat.
   At this point, you are not armed.
2. Rose-colored building, 1950s art deco, long white
   hallways, smells like under the kitchen cabinet, smells
   like under a limey rock, smells like dirty handkerchiefs,
   smells like dark cavities.
3. A head on a white plate. A nurse holding it up by its
   greasy tendrils, spooning yellow mash on to the cracked
   pavement tongue. Watch the mash seep out onto the white
   plate. Watch the bag underneath the bed fill with mud.
4. A room with pale blue walls, dirty blue, corrosive blue,
   pewter, blue that makes you want to weep, blue that
   makes you want to bang your head.
5. Listen as she chatters and clicks around the room in three-inch
   heels: How about some air in here! Have you been
   watching the French Open? Are you comfortable? Would
   you like me to turn on the light? The doctor certainly
   seems nice. I’m sorry we’re so late. We brought you some
   ice cream. Do you think you can stomach some ice cream?
6. Laugh. Asking a dying man…
7. Duck tomahawk glare.
8. Thirty years pass. Visit various heads in beds including
   but not limited to: your autistic aunt, your homeless
   uncle, your agoraphobic grandmother.
9. Do Not Touch. Each one has been carefully preserved in cellophane.
10. Arm yourself.
11. Your cat should have known better than to stare you down.
12. Killer heels.
13. You will be frisked.
14. A cylinder in back catches some of the black effluvium and another one underneath catches the rest.

15. Did you watch the U.S. Open last night? Did you read
    the life section today? I think I need a cup of coffee. Is
    anyone ever going to change the garbage? Didn’t you
    see this coming? I saw this coming. I’ve always known
    how this would end.

This selection comes from the poetry book, Goodbye Toothless House, available from KATTYWOMPUS PRESS.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

On the Train I Thought of Chagall

I saw a long line of cars.

I saw a big white house.

The ground was mottled

and abraded like

the back of a buffalo.

I saw a chicken coop,

a muddy ditch,

the padded cell

of the sky.

I saw a hunting blind,

ratcheting arms,

coal silos,

sand silos,

yards like ratty bath

mats, abandoned

sand boxes.

No green man.

No benevolent cow.

No villagers whistling

and hoisting sickles.

No multi-colored houses.

No woman waltzing

on the wind, Chagall.

It was the morning after,

the tough rows to hoe,

the scrub brush of babies

and midnight feedings,

Kansas before the witch’s

stockings and the wizard’s

charade. No tree of life,

just my chalky fingers

on the window pane,

just my face pressed

against the glass.

This selection comes from the poetry book, Goodbye Toothless House, available from KATTYWOMPUS PRESS.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.