Book Review: "Winter Street"

Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I like this author--she's very good at character and setting--but by about page 30 in this one, I could see the rest of the book coming a mile away. By the time I got near the end, I just wanted it to be over, because there was no urgency to find out how it ends, because that was obvious early on.

Pretty much of a feather-weight holiday tv movie. Not terrible, but not good enough.



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For Androcles

There is no pissed-off girl who came out of the cradle swinging.
We all lie there at first,
blue-eyed and trustful, waiting for the big milk payday.

There's no pissed-off woman like a disappointed woman,
and by the time you met me I was
past all concern, 
wearing the same old barbed-wire bathrobe from one noon to the next.

You wisely sent your envoy first,
someone sweet and old-friendy who would make me hesitate
and hold my tongue, wondering if I knew her from somewhere, or what.

Come with me, she said.
Bring your tongue, your thorny tongue,
but bring it sleeping, curled up and barely bleeding, at least for now.

She brought me to meet you and you were the one;
the one who took the thorn from my tongue,
the lion from my tongue,
and soothed it with the cold calm of your thrillingly assured blankness.

I did not forget. Did you think I would?
Months later, led into the arena of your careless lying bullshit,
I called bullshit for what it was, turned my back on you, but to this day

I am not the same pissed-off girl,
not angry in the same way,
not hungry in the same way,
and so I am grateful, as you should be, for having had the love of a lion

however briefly.
______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads. photo: Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil.

On The Popularity Of Zombies

I do not lightly speak ill of the dead,
but I will say this, as witness for myself--
the disagreeable word from a stranger's head
is not cause to take my gun from its shelf.

Look at them! They shamble!
Observe how they grasp and flail!
Easy to dismiss, without preamble
the groans and grins of those beyond our pale.

Enter the God, the Goddess!
Enter the anointed, the selected two!
Ignore the yoke, the chain, the harness,
as off to the kiosk go I, go you!

Undead mouthing nonsense vile
on social media--denounce, unfriend them!
Become un-human, toss brains on the pile;
attack the other, and those that send them!
_______

for grapeling's word list at Real Toads.

 

Desire, In Tones of Orange & Rust

Hi, pay attention, it's only me--
the steampunk librarian of Born-to-Lose Street
writing down alternate endings on the backs of envelopes,
the backs of surrogate lovers, the flip side of receipts...

Here's the door of my bedroom, six inches off the floor,
all my darlings trip out and fall like leaves.
Orange is the color that us Irish women love, it goes with green
and so we spend eternities dropping our flame-hair from the high branches of trees.

I never said I was stable,
or nice,
or worth the trouble,
all I said was you would get something rare.

Enough bullshit. I've trimmed my lips back with a peeler from a kitchen drawer,
until now I can only speak truth and all my old popularity is gone.
I'm the futuristic poet chick of By-Invitation-Only Twilight Bower,
and my dreams are in tones of wild and wood: berry-red, leaf-jade, rust and fawn.

I've been through men,
been through women,
been through solitude and I like that best;

But when I saw the way the light landed soft upon your cheek,
I fissured, I trembled in spite of myself, and thought, "Could there yet be
a fire so patient as to unwind itself at last, 
late-born (poor fool), late-kept and late-blessed?"
______

For Kerry's Dylan challenge at Real Toads. I was inspired by the song "I Want You."

 


 

The Tenth Month

In the tenth month,
the limits of the natural are exceeded.
Trees dissolve and what remains
too long must be expelled, debrided.

There you perch, smoking while I suffer.
Fire, Love? We burn, but as a disease.
In the tenth month, what has gathered must scatter
lest it smother, lest it freeze.

Behold what becomes
(of our union, dear, of our fucking.)
Behold the freak, the monster
the helpless nightmare of our making.

In the tenth month, you cannot fly, but seize
as your pretentious pose shits itself and dies.
And me? Your one-time ideal?
I eat shame, and vomit, when our merciless fledgling cries.
________

for Magaly's "October" prompt and for the Tuesday platform, both at The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. 

My Mask

My mask
cleans up nice.
Guys talk rot to it,
and it talks back.

My mask 
goes to work,
spouts input,
yaps at clients.

Punks
get in my mask,
tell it we're a bitch.
My mask changes parking lots.

Let's sit here, mute as dummies you and I.
We'll watch our masks
talk
smile
kiss
tongue
more real than we have been in years.
______ 

for Words Count with Mama Zen.
 

The Shipwreck

"All men shall be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them"--Leonard Cohen


They stood on the beach with poles,
not to rescue those wave-palsied souls who gasped their last,
but to push them further out to sea.
"A storm hit us," said the swimmers, slowly cartwheeling back under.

"No," said the beach-folk, pursing their lips in distaste for the lie,
and shaking their heads. "There is no climate crisis,
and therefore no winds such as you describe."
With that, they poked the confabulators with their poles until they sank.

"Build a wall!" came the cry. "A sea wall!"
Not to protect from invented storms, but from very real strangers
arriving unwelcome despite the poles, some still moving and coughing,
some insolently still.

In the end, order was restored and the glubbing drowners dispersed.
"We will pray for them," said the beach folk,
thinking themselves quite grand in their largesse.
The children, who had come to gawk, were sent inside as a precaution.

"After all," said the mayor, gazing nobly into the middle distance
and gripping his bible with its tales about good industrious fishermen,
"this is not appropriate for youngsters to see;
besides, you know what they say about sailors."
______

for Kerry's shipwreck challenge. Thanks for filling in for me!