Portraiture Photography

Rekinde 089

You Will Fly with Happy Thoughts

– Eleanor Leonne Bennett… ...continue reading

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.… ...continue reading

WAITING       

on the steps of the bar,

eating peanuts from a brown bag,

tossing the shells onto the sidewalk

Friday, your payday,

in rumpled gray, red uniform,

school satchel on my back,

some people stop to stare,

sum up my story in an instant

and you’re inside,

on your fifth beer, your tenth joke,

your twentieth glance up at the

painted naked lady,

wondering why all women didn’t look like that,

especially the ones you marry

maybe, when you’re done,

you’ll be sober enough to drive,

or to order pizza

or to remember my name

at least

one time you got so drunk

you passed out on the counter

I walked home,

went to bed hungry,

was nobody.

——————————————-

JUST BEFORE THE ACCIDENT

 

Skis and feet dangle from the chair lift

and there’s no such thing as danger.… ...continue reading

My face in the mirror looks raw

as seafood. The dawn feels limp

against my skin. Yesterday a friend

reported that his liver cancer

has claimed his other organs,

revising and reordering them

in defiance of their Latin names.

Six months to live, if he’s lucky.

If it would help, I’d let him look

through my gaze at this image

too unfamiliar to kill him.

Nose bulbous as ginger root,

mouth a gash imperfectly healed,

eyes lifeless behind glasses

thick as the soles of old shoes.

On the far edge of America,

he lives with a mother almost

a hundred years old and doomed

to survive her eldest son.

The slush of the timber-heavy coast

of Oregon soothes most wounds,

and Mount Hood spikes the horizon

with a ghostly presence subject

to the censorship of weather.… ...continue reading

At that angle you could see that the wind arrived at the tree to lift its branches. Raising them up with a slight and determined motion, like horses go upwards on a merry-go-round, the thick and layered leaves made for worlds inside the structures of the branches. The wind stayed in there, and only after long moments let the branches and its accompanying leaves down. Up the way a chime hung from a metal hook. It was terra cotta, with someone having painted blue depictions of Kokopelli all around it. Purple flowers waited in a hanging container beside the chime, and when the sun was strongly lit these opened more than they were used to doing, and then stretched a bit towards aerial brightness.

In the summer’s end the leaves weakened and fell, each batch getting to know the ground and the curt suburban lawns and boulevards for the first time.… ...continue reading

(version 3)

Someday Jesse wants to go home.

I see his world,

all it’s hidden concepts

embedded in Jesse’s aging facelife

has whispered by leaving

memory trails

wrinkled forehead,

deep as river bed ruts

dried with years, weather-beaten,

just above his bushy eyebrows

that are gray and twisted

much like life drawing memories

across his empty face.

Jesse has a long oblique

Jewish nose with dark

blue opal eyes,

that would pierce

even the pain

of his own crucifixion.

Life tears flow though

a whole new ghoulish

apparition, a vision

of homelessness plastered

east of Dearborn Bridge,

near Lower Wacker Drive,

downtown Chicago

where affluent citizens

seldom go unless inebriated;

puke-stained, or in a taxicab.

————————————–

Jesse’s hair sprouts skyward,

groomed like an abandoned

dove nest in wild Chicago

meandering winds.… ...continue reading

The Ascension of David      

 

 

In the Clouds of Shame

Of the Creator’s Guild

– Ernest Williamson III … ...continue reading