She was the prettiest girl you ever loved, but she tortured you like the Inquisition. She’d bawl that she loved you one minute, flirt with your friends the next. Every few weeks you’d break it off, for good this time, until she scratched at your apartment door to toy with your heart like a cat with a captured mouse. She would disappear in the morning, and you limped off to work that day with your throat talked raw and your heart wrung dry and your stomach tied up in knots. And you’d count the minutes until you saw her again.
So you leave town, for a good job and a fresh start. You meet a better girl, a nicer one, who moves without complaint through your transfers and promotions.…
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For Linda, on her 27th Birthday
I
She uncoils wind in its slender
sinews
both surface and depth
and my uncurling bones,
it names this mystery,
its softening, like a sad evening
shunted between doors.
She unrolls in my rippling muscle
such tenseness unknotting time,
a loud noise in a shock of being.
My prick erects in this toppling universe,
and all our hearts
like coins
in a box
like a mirror in all necessity,
my miraculous us! …
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For a moment
Frozen at the window
A peaceful vision glorifies
The placid tree thrusts into
Our luminous sky.
Letting go in death
A dull gold leaf
Dancing slowly
To its grave of memories.
– Carl Scharwath…
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Art Lesson
You take a step into the Chinese scroll
That used to be San Francisco. A gray
Wall over a grayer bay and some small holes
Punched by bridges, barges, hints of mountain
Or hill, prison to your right as views unroll,
A little worn at the curled edges. Stray
Ribbons of fog float through clouds. It’s not cold—
It should be—but when surprise runoffs drain
From roofs, you shiver. You seek a dry way
To climb down this slope, enter the picture,
But give up. Damp shoes are the price you pay
To beauty. Someone is out there, you’re sure—
No dark beauty out of movies—no, it’s
A missed dream tugging at you. Or you read
Something once—three old men, a cat, some mist,
Maybe cranes or swans.…
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Death
A summit of light
built before her.
A canopy rising higher
and higher as she looks up.
Her hands press
against her eyes
trying to swipe the brightness
away, but her fingers
are bathed in it,
They smell like light,
bright, burnt sugar,
they sizzle against her eyelids
setting them on fire
like the thinnest of papers.
For Shadow
A goodbye written in water
moved through me.
A chase of words
and things I’d like to have
said and done for you.
I breathe through this night
with the leftovers of you
at my heels.
They have taken over my room,
my house,
so there’s not a spot
that won’t tear skin from my limbs.
There’s only goodbye left,
I know,
just the tail of our time together
to try to wrap around us
as we are yanked apart.…
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Portraiture Photography
Rekinde 089
You Will Fly with Happy Thoughts
– Eleanor Leonne Bennett…
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How did she do it?
That was what Kristy Ambrose was thinking as she staggered into the bathroom that day. She ran her head under the cold tap and stepped into the shower. Somewhere, Betsy was climbing out of her bed and would soon start tearing around the house until it was time to leave. Kristy wondered if he-Steve, or Joe?-would wait around long enough to say goodbye or if he would run at the first sight of Bets. She thought of last night, the taste of cigarettes on his tongue as it entered her mouth, the booze that ran through both of them in their sweat. Behind her on the floor were last night’s clothes, none of them big enough to cover three tiles on the floor.…
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