12/21/16 @ 11:28 a.m.
I walk my dog
Through liquid air
Miniscule droplets
Pelt my forehead
As I make my rounds
Of the parking lot
The winter solstice
Less than a day old Only yesterday
The morning sky
Not quite fulfilling
Wakefulness Yesterday
…………………………………………………………………………..The shortest
The sky Of the year
Blue-gray
With a tinge of white
At the border At the horizon
Like an artist’s canvass
Not quite ready
Prepared
Flat
Waiting
…
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In search of light and love and lost time,
the months are flying by
faster than either of us imagined.
Loneliness speeds us to the grave
more surely thandisease,
yet we remain impotent in the face of it.
Try as we might to cling to the past
and each other, the present
has a proclivity for mass murder.
Wind swept and shell-shocked, we stand
on differentshore lines
ineluctably alone, defying the odds.
Our fates inextricably bound, written
by fear and solitude,
unerringly devoted, waiting around to die.
– Mark A. Murphy…
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. . . you burnt your lip on the coffee mug, distracted by the pretty crow eating french-fries in the parking lot, thrown out by a litterer during a conversation with a potential lover who wanted to impress with callousness, the girl who was only in the car by virtue of a blind date agreement, trusting another’s word, who hadn’t noticed the bird or the fries, her window rolled up since she was chilly, her mother’s advice unheeded as to the need for a sweater for the evening, the lights still on at home, that mother sitting, not really watching the television, wondering if the daughter will do what she did on blind dates, the worry turning to fantasizing about lost years and chances, the husband, separated from the worried wife, prone in a downtown apartment – cars passing loudly along the avenue – intently watching a rented DVD, absently murmuring on the phone with an old girlfriend, that woman, at work in the restaurant on a break where the fries originated, having just dropped some more for the giddy teenagers idling in line at the drive-thru, which is visible from the table where you sat when, instead of being in the moment of coffee and conversational enjoyment, you were entertained by a frolicking bird in the innocent evening sun in a littered parking lot – of which you blamed – mentally – for causing you to burn your lips, which would later tempt me but were ultimately kept at bay due to the pain.…
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You have asked for just seven candles
demanded chocolate, willing to pass
on ice-cream, though not seconds.
You have invited only me.
I’m out of work again,
bring only the two-tiered tribute,
place it on the counter, and warn,
be careful chewing, there’s a file inside.…
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1.
Blurry I blink open
to Madonna in tacky tiara
and low-riding jeans, time-stop
dancing in a blue-red sepia swirl
before the stars and stripes
skinny arms sprawling bare
exposed hips swirling
bye bye Miss American Pie.
I don’t realize it’s the TV
until the doctor rolls in,
feel needles stiff underskin
sticky circles sucked to my chest
reading faint signs of life.…
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When you were five
And I was six,
We would hold hands
Just like this.
When you were nine
And I was ten,
We made a pact
To never tell, and then:
You began to tell me every word
That escaped from your lips, with cold secret stares.
A look or a glance through long
Fingertips. Your beautiful face.
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This morning she saw you tumble down
the stone wall. She scrambles to inspect
for scraped knees, soft blood. You are
perfect, unmarred. No scar to tell.
She scoops you back up. You straddle
the bridge rails. Toss pebbles
that ripple across her taut skin.
A picnic of fried chicken and cool
sweet tea, how easy to forget the sun
can slow burn, reflect off the heavy marsh,
and make murky the foretelling:
how fragile this bassinet of bone and blood.
– Rebekah Keaton…
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