Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Double

There are stupid women everywhere--
thick as pigeons on every sidewalk;
if you step on one she will try to lift her snapped neck
to kiss your boot heel and make it better.

I am not like them,
any more than a tigress is like a turnip.
I am nothing like those women laid out on the berber, weeping,
as if they were human carpet runners in the rental house of Love.

I have perfected the art of being solitary.
I cup my hands under the good sturdy faucet of just-enough.
You can lean on my doorbell all day, caress it like a clitoris, 
but I will stay in the far room, as bored as a blind Burmese.

Once, though,
in the months after Us,
when I spent my time plying puny needle and thread
building swaying rope bridges to find my way around the bomb-scatter of my heart,

I wept for you like a child.
I kept your last message on my machine until a power outage erased it.
I took myself for long walks and was jostled by strangers
who hurried through and past, like bad news from a Ouija.

Sometimes they looked like you,
and I would coo to them,
from my broken throat
like an imbecile.
_____________

for Karin's "entwin(n)ed" prompt.

 

24 comments:

  1. nice...i like how you start with the women willing to let themselves be stepped on and still kiss the heel that does it....then point out you are not them...but then bring it back in the end to your own tender place shay...all done in your unique style...smiles...well done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Shay - this has a wonderfully mordant sense of humor coupled with a self-deprecating pain that works super well - Agree with Brian that the pigeon on the sidewalk comes back to roost so poignantly - very well done - my favorite image though is the faucet of just enough - I think of W.H.Auden - plunge your hands in the basin, plunge them up to the wrist, stare stare in the water and wonder what you've missed. Those good old difficult old faucets. Thanks for participating. k.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brilliant - the way you brought us back to the opening stanza in that last part.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A great way to encompass conflicting emotions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The last three lines are sublime and punctuate the entire, well conceived and executed piece. ~ M

    ReplyDelete
  6. The excellence of this piece lies in your similes - each is vivid and unexpected and shows how good figurative language can provide a world of experience in a few lines. I also like the journey here: a woman who has risen above heartache, is beyond forgiveness but remembers the fall, and the broken neck all too well.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wonderful how it reads like a story progressing almost between the lines.. and the end a sadness thats extremely raw. Love the read

    ReplyDelete
  8. imagery and emotions well portrayed in words. Enjoyed the read.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I don't know which is harder to regulate--one's own stupidity, or one's own needs--and is it really stupidity, or a kind of grace that floats like a fragrance from the crushed rose? Making it a pigeon may perhaps be closer to the truth, because such things are messy, and also innately limited, yet still pigeons do fly...I am babbling a bit and wandering through the woods of your words at random, but that's a side-effect of the knock on the head, the recognition I got from this piece.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You don't pull any punches, do you?
    This left me reeling and breathless. You have the enviable gift to do that with your writing.

    ReplyDelete
  11. omg, that nick cave. i can't hear him sing without having to change my panties. love the song (i hadn't heard it before and i have all of his cd's and books).

    your poem is amazing...just like you. xo

    ReplyDelete
  12. You have painted the complexity of the woman, yet her strength comes out ~ "I have perfected the art of being solitary." - resonated with me ~

    Have a good week Shay ~

    ReplyDelete
  13. Whoa--the diction here bites. And the mysterious woman with such a strong voice rising from the reduction to the gutturals of the imbecile. Really powerful.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "any more than a tigress is like a turnip"

    Hey, waitaminute... ;-)

    Excellent piece. Loved the last stanza, and how it brought the entire work home for me.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Caress it like a clitoris." Brilliant line. Simply brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
  16. the sturdy faucet of just enough sustained me for centuries as turnip and tigress! I love your fine wordswork







    ALOHA from Honolulu
    Comfort Spiral
    ~ > < } } ( ° > <3

    ReplyDelete
  17. "human carpet runners in the rental house of Love."

    That is just beyond brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  18. think there always is a once that brought us to where we are and it hurt so bad that we never wanna go there again..ha..i like the caressing the doorbell like a clitoris

    ReplyDelete
  19. Wonderful, superb, totally brilliant!

    Anna :o]

    ReplyDelete
  20. i like the journey back and forth. Crying, weeping and then picking up the pieces to move on, resolute! Very well captured, the ensembles of emotions

    ReplyDelete
  21. love this .. but not like a broken neck pigeon

    ReplyDelete
  22. I, too, was most struck by the waters of just enough........and the depth of pain expressed towards the end. No one writes love - or pain - like you do.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Oh wow this is exceptional and I love the intensity and vehemency of your writing. I am quite antisocial if I weren't married now I would be a crazy cat lady or institutionalized whichever

    ReplyDelete

Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?