Rising up out of the early morning dark to spiderwebs of melting winter songs, such cricketing of birds tickling in dew ears, that's longing.
I could have hiccoughed a moon for you, to spasm in another day,
instead, the warmth evaporates away pink aborted petals,
crumbled like lolliwrappers,
the sweets jar rattles inside the pantry door, half-empty.
I thought about opening it, unraveling each cricket wrapper as a flower unbuds, grasping the stem of the pop with both hands just to fill my mouth with something that you loved.
I still remember my origins and often sing them to the dye born in the stuffiness of stitch and sweat and overseas the taylor, my mother and her machine, and me: a d-n-a of strings.
I am of the looped and knitted and embroidered and tattooed of the kind that takes many a punishing to soften:
the flesh of werewolf, the skin of werepig, I was to become a wearing the Dior, Chanel, Armani; my talent was in the fittings, my purpose in appearing and somehow too in hiding.
Many wearings do so lazily, stretch themselves out too thin.
But I will sing to the dyes the dance of a mother's nimb fingers in her love for me. I will sing to the world my stitches, my color soaked and baked and flung smack upon a rock, a gem, a shooting star!
I will show them my hems, the fruit of a hanger, the swirl before a mirror how they finger my velvets as the poor often rub their money.
She tries me on, stuffs me in a bag, sizes me every night for twenty nights until the day of the dance.
I will mold with her shapes and skeletons and stains and cling to her skin. I will make you better than you have ever been, so please,
the darkness of this closet, please,
the moth, the darkthings, the tumbling of a dryer
for twenty years, please,
I am ready now for that most ultimate of wearings, for when the coffin opens and the earth swallows me whole with you again at last, my dear.
04 Sometimes you wish you didn't ask for random prompts
coffin fields of cauliflowers culling cactuses in a heat of rain dust red and swimming fishbones
strange lands and flippant migratory birds, here they are patterned against the sky as a tattoo, beating, pulsing, around in arched V's and sun beads dripping down the skin like red welts
these are the red-brown stains of my coffee mug swirling in an abyss of paper-white chalk empty phrases
the mug cracks not unlike the way the poem ends.
Spoiler
The prompt was field of coffins, broken coffee mugs, and falling birds xD
Audyyyyy congrats on keeping up thus far! I absolutely love your use of imagery in your poems; they describe so many small details in such vivid detail, and they give me a unique warmth that's difficult to describe. Your last lines always hit me in the gut, and ughghghgh it's really pleasant to experience. The line "I could have hiccoughed a moon for you/ to spasm in another day," in your first poem made me speechless. Your second poem is simply gorgeous, and quite calming, homey, almost. The last line was so special and lilting, "& your eyes before a certain light— monarch butterflies." It drew the poem to a perfect close. "I am ready now for that most ultimate of wearings, for when the coffin opens and the earth swallows me whole with you again at last, my dear." Your third poem was different and the point of view threw me off at first, but once I got into it, it was enjoyable. The last line really tied it together. Finally, your most recent one. The title made me laugh and I agree, it looks like it was hard to tie those all together. XD I'm going to say that the imagery didn't seem quite linked and I was a bit confused, but I'm sure someone could look into this poem and find a deep, dark meaning behind it. However, the imagery itself was beautifully written, and again, the last line was lovely.
Looking forward to the rest of your poems! Keep going, you've got this! ^-^
"This world is but a canvas to our imagination." ~Thoreau
it is moonlight where i am and i live alone and listen to the million lights & sums of breaths and slink away peeling sweaty socks into the hushload of dirty sleep between the solitude and reticent weeps.
i carry my loneliness inside the coming of a home undone— the potatoes baked in grief, rotting its' loan upon unopened bills, cold rooms and unmade beds and snotty handkerchiefs.
there is still a kind of cold in our bellies, where the grief swells overplaying missed messages fossilizing a lump of dried photos in the cavity of throats stinging of loss, poison & copper paper cuts—
it rains every day, a white rain like the moon is melting candle wax and scorching me upon my skin its' reminder, its' wound:
those silver chimes like svelt bells singing who better to reach for them than your grubby, tired hands balled tangerines and fingers giggling midair
some eyes you've inherited, little prune pits people spit in the yard so they fire up in the sun, that VACANT look, I know between those radish ears a world is overgrown of your dandelion wishes
his is a head full of commas, hair tightly coiled, ebony wisps to expressionist micro-emoticon-ic facial ticks, to the way he licks long fingers before flipping pages and harping upon my trilingual sense of tricking up the words
his is a monstrous appetite from the time the meat is picked up in paper wrinkled wrapping to the pinking of an apple core on the driving for a hankering of a burger to-go on the way home sizzling cooked meals prepared in all the bite-sizes he's journeyed through the day.
sometimes, his forearm softens glossy and his suddenly attentive kiss breathing waist scrotum rough
his is how our whims coincide, and he ends up smelling like sandalwood and how the bow of his arm as he reaches for me across the couch in music plays us a harmony, how his toned back stretches a long road to the beat on his playlist
and each knob a dark nipple and how does he lack hangnails?
10 Blunt Force Trauma (a kinda oldish one but still editing/rewriting)
Today, you walk by as if there were something inside alive, someone maybe a hound, skitters of roaches
They're cutting the corn outside dry husks of blowing brown rattles and they're cutting it down
you're reminding me out here why the sky sorrows back to us in echoes
where the children find not want of play a haunted place; the wind whisks you to pieces here
the way we harvest corn, how a stalk takes many punishing before it softens by design, conforming so obediently
this is how farm kids disappear to the city running themselves lost, tunneling under canvases acres tall and rattling over head
vanishing for hours, for days they are not found in the corn fields
Today, you're reminding me why as we slow from our walk out of breath stopping just to make sure we haven't heard maybe something, a breath even of one of those kids in the forest of corn listening as he is running away.
the wake of the rain in the morning after sleep, a candle energy seeps through an open window fogged glass hush of a tender mother with her gentle weep her back is bowed over and her shoulders heavy and pitch bark
these cucumber eyes why do they resemble her
not swollen, but wide and cold I feel it ice over bare neck
this is her peace, knowing by the night's dim lush the asphalt city's sogged in her worries and the dogs are fanning their tails just the same.
However, the imagery itself was beautifully written, and again, the last line was lovely.
