a gunpowder trail, sinuous
across the wooden plank floor sparkling
down the stairs, scarring the runner, under
the wainscot and around
the corner, you know
this trail
dropped
from a hole
somehow bored
in the wooden keg and then
he
comes along
and lights
it
from the other end
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Forty-Three
And What Happens to the People Who Come Into Our Lives and Try to Love Us
I’ve been crawling your body for weeks, seeking
scars, a signature left behind, some sort
of split where the shrapnel went in and did the skin
heal over before the metal
was removed. I’ve been trying hard to still your eyes long
enough to let me crawl inside, but I cannot quite make it before
they shift, flash, or blink tossing me off, making me grab for something
to steady, check around for someone watching
me navigate the displacement of ground underneath, my rubber knees, bare
feet grasping the stingy rubble crumbling. Crying through smoke surrounding, grey tear streaked face barely able to breath. This place is too thick
with history, more a photograph in a book of me peeping
now through a window, some people on a beach, sand in creases, twisted
hair, honey skin smoothed from wind and abrasion, smiles rising and fading, windblown loneliness, the ache for life to begin again where it’s now
stagnant and peeling, the same since last spring. Honey, I’m trying to draw
myself back to safety, inside again to the stubble on your chin, the pulsing
of your tongue, or the soft v between your fingers, but the stillness outside this reality is killing me and the wind wont stop howling your name, telling me if I cut you open I could catch a glimpse of infinity.
Boundless
As the ardent moon approaches, hot and bright, melted stars smeared
behind her, instigating the night, wrecking her orbit, confusing
the seas. Should she do her best to calm herself? Smooth her dress, apply
fresh gloss, sit and pose for her eternal painting?
As the ardent moon approaches, fervent and perfervid, throwing sparks
now having scraped off her silver, she’s ruining geometry and algebra,
serpentine,incongruent, misaligned with the planets. Should she pause
and adjusther coordinates? Hold her hands and feet just so as she avoids
blinking too much in the camera flash bulbs?
As the ardent moon approaches, life swells, rises, and overflows in anticipation
of her kiss, but she only knows how to love with her fists, brushing ants from her planet, she is visibly disgusted by the crawling and clawing, striving
in the desperate attempt
to stay alive.
Of course she wants love. She is trying frantically to remember how it was she
came to be, understand the concept of freedom, stitch together the touch
of a lover’s hand, shake the bitter vagueness, make mist solid, grasp the throat
of camaradarie, squeeze tears from the soft, downy comfort
of all that was once cool and green.
Mild Sparkler Burn Healing Under a Band Aid on a Warm Summer’s Evening
Is it panorama that pulls? And landscape might
so be
an enraptured phrase, but not
all rolling hills
are magestic and not
everything in motion
is alluring.
But could it be possible on a warm summer’s
eve that the reluctant
drying
of the willow’s leaves might
stay the friction of the
grinding
bones that eventually
wears
ardor away?
Not Just Romantic Separation, But Also the Death of Family Members
We survive the hours between waking
and sleeping, some stylishly, some with more
money, slinking between
problems beneath
speaking passionately, purposefully gesturing,
hand on forehead, publicly worried
about others’ safety.
Some with chests heavy, heaving
to overflow regret
or rage.
Some, without thinking,
smile at the day.
Hollywood
She tried to make herself
smaller or drown
in the words wafting
from his brother’s wounded,
gritty mouth like
a ton of wet milkweed
fluff dropped
on her chest –
the anvil weight
cartoonish.
His mother circled, a crow
full of poisoned rat – clawing,
clacking, waddling, preening in the dense
unkindness, kneading
her scar tissue
into shapeless, thorny
wads.
Three Hundred and Sixty-Five (Thank You)
It’s selfish for me
to think
you gentle, assign
adjectives I need, create
a snapshot
of your hands
in my mind
just to please me.
I cannot create you
from words on a screen.
Love
grows rich outside
of reality.
Not the dirty
word love, that dry
hacking cough, scratching
the soul
in a starving
darkness
wanting desperately to please
while mostly
just needing
but
love,
swollen and heavy,
overflowing, swaying, undulating,
hypnotizing,
raw, slick and dirty
in the moistness of spring,
merciless, discordant
fungus
repeating
and
repeating
and
repeating.
Salt to Salt
In the moonless darkness of summer
the ocean breathes
under burden of cloud bank
and heat, oppressive, steaming,
she is a dog with rotting
teeth panting, whining,
and begging
for something of yours
to eat.
Neck sweating, fingers pushed
into palms like a baby, her feet
blindly sweep the ocean
floor teeming
with life imprisoned, tangled
and clinging in a world of saline
and desperate desire
to feel
all the things
we humans
try to blunt.
red wire thread
We are too fast
in this world
don’t you think ?
racing cars
under the canopies
of birch trees
tossing leaves carelessly
as guests
throwing rice
at a wedding.
I’ll wear a white cotton
dress and you wear
you hair the way
it’s gone grey
of late. I worried
today what we might become
if I never made
you real, if forever
we were always glancing
down at a screen,
glancing up at a screen and never
at each others faces –
never slipping frantic
fingers across faces into
mouths along the mountains
and molehills and geysers
of each other – but remained
me giving
me to everyone
near me
wishing when wishes
overcame that everyone
in this world
was you.
Daily
I choke
back the terror and anger
in this dry black
laughter. I wanted
to invite you to go walking
just now.
I’ll wear
these black converse and you
may wear exactly
what you’d wear
of course.
I wondered though what
you might wear though and whether
you would steer me
gently right
and left with your hand
on my neck, and if the skin
on your hands is like
paper
soaked in rain
and dried in the sun
on the rail of my deck.
The wood is soft.
I can dig my
nails in.
Describe yourself
in fifteen words
or less
forever.
What are your strengths and what
would you say
are your weaknesses
in this lifetime
and the last.
Did you let me die
before you?
Are you aware
that on several
and random days
I’m choking on these
bones and leaves
you’ve tossed
in your
emphatic thoughtfulness?
Can you hear me
screaming?
Come here.
Honey.
Come.
here.
please.
Copy of Your Vagina
There is no such thing as love.
Only degrees of sexual attraction
and the horrible things
we do to each other
when the novelty
wears off.
jenifer.wills 