Stock, Celery, Carrots

For the soup--
stock, celery, carrots.
What of the egg, the seed, your hand in mine
last winter, or the one before?

The chicken, the garden, the blackberry summer
never knew what hit them--
Look now and you won't find a damn thing.

I stir stock, celery, carrots--
the pot steams my windows til I'm blind.

Still, I go through the motions, because that's the expected thing.
I don't even feel the bowls in my hand--
I have no appetite at all, and yet I am the Mistress of Delicious Things

Consumed by others and praised
until they set their wet spoons down to stain the cloth.
_______

A bitchy little number for Kerry's challenge about time, at Real Toads.

Catholic Girl On The Loose

Sans shoes,
sans pants,
I am Joan
saving France.

Behold my pennant, my purpose, Saint Margaret and Saint Cat;
bold as bread made from molasses, unshorn hair as plain and black.

Bonjour English
A bientot--
teach you Francais
when I grow.
_____

Ten lines for Kerry's micro-challenge at Real Toads.

Image: "The Flag" by Thomas Cooper Gotch, 1910.

"A bientot" = "see you soon"

 

Rose

What a pretty pram, my dear, so fey and queer and quiet--
Emptiness so elegant I feel compelled to buy it

And fill it full of roses, dear, their heads cut clean and slanted
At each stem like diadems of royalty recanted.

I'll roll them 'neath a crescent moon, my dear to soothe your sorrow--
To plant again by Gypsy men I'll hire for gold tomorrow.
______ 

For Kerry's micro-poetry challenge at Real Toads.

This is the first poem written in my gorgeous new journal given to me by Hedgewitch. 

My Love & I

Here is your church,
the one you threw us out of, my love and I--
with its pews like boxes
holding captive monkeys forbidden the fez.

Organ grinder, 
create a distraction while we rob, my love and I,
this financial institution with its tellers
become oracles inspired by vapors and pride.

On the beach, 
discarded gods half-heartedly deal tired goddesses--
they use their umbrellas for bicycle wheels,
spinning like starfish back to the sea.

My love and I,
we are dual queens in the card game of time,
clocks and mattress ticking
the only clouds we allow, fiats from the feathers of talking birds.

What does it mean,
you'll ask between mouthfuls
of the stew we serve from peat bog and nightmare--
what does it mean? It means-- go back to your church; die there.

Have chattered your benediction from the primate pulpit
while my love and I spend your money
with Cpl. Jesus in a sidecar
down some sunny, narrow street you'll never find.
__________

 

2 Reasons

There are two reasons why I love you,
one why I don't.

1. The things you say. You're a silver-tongued devil, such a testament talker.

2. The sight of you spills me, inside of myself. I overbalance, warmly.

And the other?

1. Someone killed us both, but we got up again, hipsway walkers--

One proud, one guilty.
_______ 

A flash 55 for the cauldron of the fearsome and powerfully magical Hedgewitch at Real Toads.

Buy Curious

Your heart is held in a rose's petals--
a ghost holds the past in an empty room;
You ask me to speak what the cards reveal--
your life laid out in pasteboard cartoons.

Go home.
Ask someone to smack you, hard.
Or stay, but it's gonna cost you, sister,
to move my hand from the back of the card.
_____

For Words Count with Mama Zen.

 

Between Angels and Elephants

Between angels and elephants,
sparrows atop the tent poles
and tigers on two-foot stools,

is the acrobat.
Not bird, nor magician,
she starts in sawdust,
but circuses have ladders.

Every act involves a first time
and a thousandth.
Smell the blood and popcorn;
believe it matters what you do--

the merest sparrow is one part angel;
women and tigers...two.
_____

Exactly sixty words for Mama Zen's "Words Count."

Image: "Circus Girl Smokes While Rehearsing Her Stunts", Nina Leen 1949. 

The picture made me think of the film Wings Of Desire ("Der Himmel Uber Berlin") in which two angels wander post-war Berlin. One of them falls in love with a circus trapeze artist, and wishes to become mortal so that they can be together. Because of copyright restrictions, I can't post the trailer on the blog, and so I provide a link HERE. It will open in a new window, so you don't have to leave this page in order to view it.