Indie's Incandescent Inscriptions

4/9: Crayons & Pixie Dust


This, then, is my childhood:
lemonade in mason
jars and ice on my tongue, freezing
pickle juice in the summer,
itchy tights and ballet
recitals, perfect
attendance and teacher’s
pet, melted crayons left
to coalesce with dust
in the car for

fifteen years
old and I do not qualify for “adult.”
I am still barely
out of the cradle, if you look at it
logistically, politically, I am
just a little over 1/6 complete with
my life, underaged and supposed
to be innocent.
But believe me when I say
that the “‘nt some?” baby
with chocolate-smudged
fingers on Christmas
morning has not left me, I’ll still
share my confections, my
affection with you.

I’ve had pixie dusted dreams
of hovering four inches
above the ground but I never fly
far. I don’t want to grow
up.

4/10

Spoiler

Proud of myself for making it this far and even daring to branch out of narrative and try something more abstract! This turned out to be longer than I expected.

Darling, dearest
lemon drop
s stored in pajama
drawers, dimes in tissues
(a quarter’s a fortune)
stale candy in bike baskets,
Sissy, I saved this gummie bear
from when you didn’t want it
because you said you were on a
fast around the upstairs
rubber track in Hello Kitty
flip-flops, little grasshopper
legs, flailing and strong.

Jim Carrey humor and movies
like the Grinch, nonanimated, fill your
summer
art classes, colored chalk and painting
easels, forget the canvas,
Sissy, I saved this painting
I made for you when you said
to put it somewhere else
because your room was too
full on purple cherries, no maraschinos or
whip cream, please.

School days and the adopted friend with
eight fingers, the one you asked
if she could show you how to write
without using thumbs, the Chinese
girl with the serious eyes that crinkled
when you made her laugh and you said
you love it when she smiles,
Sissy, I saved this math question
for you from when
you didn’t have time to help
because you had homework too in the
afternoons of homemade
milkshakes and knowing
which two handles to hold
so the garbage cans won’t roll
sideways down the driveway
before second grade.

Beach trips and chasing
the dog with a self-explanatory
name, running down the shore
for forty-four minutes
until someone asked you
for your mom’s number
(911, what’s your emergency)
Sissy, I saved this shell
for you that I found in front
of the big pink beach house
because you like the clear,
white ones,
and that could have been the day
Sissy lost you forever, but instead
it turned out to be the day
she found your beautiful
tenacity.

Every single one of these poems is so awesome!!
Everything resonated with such truth!NEVER STOP WRITING!
EVER.

Oh jeez, I feel so inadequate these past few days. But thank you, SkyeJane. Means a lot.

4/11: Astringent


Your aloe vera good intentions
remind me I’ve been burned
before, the memory like the tingled spark
of a phantom limb.

There were three infernos
before you,
but you are the first
to see that all of my unspoken
words are doused
in ethanol, stagnant and waiting
for a nearby match.

You are the first
to gauge these muffled
embers, and I trust that your
static astringency
will bring relief to my heart’s
charred chambers.
I believe you
when you say, “The fever
will help you heal.”

4/12: They Called Him Adi


Maybe if the Vienna Academy of Art
had accepted the student
with the cracked
canvas and postcard
architecture,

the world would not be mourning
the lives of six million
when the sun sets
each April 7.

4/13: Emancipation of Chaetophobia


I am sitting here with my legs
pulled up to my chest
after studying for an exam
on the history of feminism
tomorrow. The bathwater in this
Victorian-style tub
has faded like today’s sun,
and my eyes find
Andromeda in the sky.

Before kindergarten, I imagined
my fuzzy kneecaps were like
a pair of soggy mid-ocean
ridges. Over a decade later,
the time it took for the 1915
hairless movement
to take effect in America,
I am still left wondering
who decided
that women must shave their legs
to be beautiful.

4/14: Cochlear Withdrawals


I am vulnerable – a snail
without its shell;
I want to withdraw inside
this spiraled cochlea
and cling to your echoes,
long after the sun whispers
goodbye and your words
grow dim.

4/15: Reincarnation of the Boston Massacre


Two hundred forty-three years
after the British opened fire
on colonists, blood trails
down the streets
of Boston once again.

America is temporarily
deafened, sifting through
the rubble, the echoes.

Politicians, writers,
SWAT teams, artists,
withdrawing to their shells
that claim “We’re Americans;
of course we have it
all together”; each
individual trying to find
a reason, a resolution.

But all the epitaphs
in the world cannot expose
the guilty fingerprints
on those handmade bombs.

A small crowd formed
around the local gym’s TV
screen this afternoon,
video footage of the explosions
on replay: unsuspecting
normality,
sudden smoke,
repeat.

The numbness I felt
was covered with polite nods,
exchanged pleasantries,
when all I really wanted
to say was, Don’t you know
three people died
today.

Instead I dressed
in my tennis shoes, t-shirt,
workout shorts, the same way
participants of the Boston Marathon
dressed this morning. I walked
up the stairs, evenly, one
at a time, to the upstairs track,
just as the residents
of the Walking City ambled
down the front steps
of their homes this morning.
And I began to run,
fast, because this was a race -
this was a race that ended
with the taste of iron
in my mouth.

I envy you for writing amazing poems
...and staying on schedule

Thank you Ani

4/16:

Spoiler

My first really lame poem this month.

It occurred to me
that the way I feel
for you will never be
a cliché,

and that, in itself,
is why one day we will grow
tired of this “forever”
metaphor.

4/17: Birthmarks and Traffic Lights

Ancient history tells me
I should consider
you to be a nomad -
you wander the streets
of my body’s city
as if you’ve never been lost
before. But you tell me
my scars are traffic
lights, green
means go - you are confirmed
by the proof of my mal-
functions, these birthmarks
are the café beads
you pray to, a rosary
cul-de-sac:

you are comforted
by my angel-
kissed authenticity.

.

4/19: Skin and Exposition


It took me a while
to realize how vulnerable
humans are, how similar
we are to the leukocytes
that travel within us. We splay
open our ribs, immunity
on our sleeves, the benefit
of the doubt like a hostess
gift for the incurable.

We, the people, are
penetrable - holes
in our body: we
leak.

I think it’s something we
know needs to be fixed,
but we’re too ashamed
to admit the transparency
of our own skin, we don’t
believe it when we’re told
that the average thickness
of the epidermis ranges
between 1 and 2.5 millimeters.

The flutter of a butterfly’s wings
in Africa can trigger a tornado
in Texas, they say. But we
don’t live in Texas - we live
in a society where vulnerability
is beautiful. Since when
did the miles of epithelial cells
stretched across prominent
bones become lovely?