Fill our mouths with those heart-shaped candies
and say the words, those melting words--
a dollar hidden in your hat brim, an amulet tucked inside my shoe.
Pretty wildflowers grow
fed from the slack-jawed smiles below--
blackbird, bluebird,
cowbird, crow.
Here is our memory book, let's fill it and call it a life.
If you need anything, ring this little bell;
I'll blow in to say the words, those healing words--
like the cutest little Christ-girl, your do-the-devil wife.
See the sunflowers, tall and fine
lining the road from our prairie cottage here--
sun burn, sour churn,
your lies, mine.
_______
"Ghost Maiden in the Meadow," 2015, by Angela Deane
A little scribble for The Storialist.
Some day, perhaps with your last dying breath, you'll tell us how in the hell you do this.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, we just read, our mouths gaping open in amazement...
Really splendid read indeed.
ReplyDeleteI find the third stanza to be the most impacting.
ReplyDeleteyou have such fricking talent. you switch styles with the wind and impress the helloutta us.
ReplyDeleteWow! I love how you took this challenge on. That's a lovely and ferocious poem...you capture the tone of the image so well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing and sharing! :)
An incredible juxtapostion you have wrought - a fine response to your chosen image - I love the little incantations you slip in here and there too.
ReplyDeleteHow could she possibly resist? Love the birds and, especially, the closing stanza.
ReplyDeleteYour poems always seem so organic--they seem to sprout, as here, from the seed of a single line and grow wildly, meandering like vines, or sometimes stiff and clutching like carnivorous plants, greening the imagination of the reader toward some vision which shimmers sweetly but disappears when grasped. I love the contrast between the rhymed portions and the more free-form--beautifully sewn together with the thread only the heart can spin.
ReplyDeleteI love that you need the proof of this ephemeral moment. That's all my writing is: proof that I lived it all.
ReplyDelete"Faith is an island in the setting sun, but proof is the bottom line for everyone." -Paul Simon
la la mosk
you blow my mind like clockwork. Tick....tick.....BOOM!
ReplyDelete( '>
/))
//""
ALOHA
ComfortSpiral
=^..^=
why do i feel this turned from light to dark?
ReplyDeleteThis is so gorgeous and so unsettling.
ReplyDelete