flypaper

"They are good children."
He bowed his head
as he spoke to me,
perhaps prayed to god.
A wire of light

sliced through mushroom curtains
and fell hungrily
on sticky paper. Wings, legs

hung above us. How dare we
discuss his good children
while pain dangled--

almost carefree. I heard
the buzzing flies,
the drone of his voice,
as he told me how I must care for them.

"They have curious needs,
peculiar appetites."

He rose from his kitchen table
and led me to the children.

I Won't Room with Mona

She has vast, suicide windows,
like levees,
breaking with sunlight--
claws still hanging
in the loose screen. Her Manx road it
to the pavement. And there are rumors
of a flatmate who didn't bounce.
Just rumors.

But that's not why I decline
to room with Mona.
Her crocheted doilies are creepy.

.

 

bullwhip rose

always knew god was tetched,
what with armadillos, the moon,
and günter rose.
he just flung a soul
into that baby,

giving us branches
our granpappy--
a new cry in winter
that soon wailed

into bullwhip,
god's günter
under a confederate sky,
lashing shuffalongs in white fields.

brothers marched north.
brothers marched south.
they marched past günter,

shadow in a cave,
blue ridge hidey-holes
miles from unpicked clouds,

fields now waiting for sons,
sons waiting for papa's swinging arm.
texas took those sons,
and years later:

"horses rocked us toward that bless-you place.
i bumped along on the bed
in chaw-splattered, church white.

i was hush like raw cotton,
unpicked in the sun.

suppose other wagons came
just so he could crack them aside."

old whip curls like a rattler's memory
in my grandma rose's lap.
she speaks of digging dirt,
a small grave to return it
to ready hands.

 

 

Africa On My Porch

whispers of raffia
hush good ladies
who step snowy over crates

ibejis are heat and supper,
not their paper promises

they clipboard me to corners,
nervous dine on lead fingers,
pinky offers

don't break the points

their pembe cheeks shade camwood
when my name rubs to vapor

cultures mingle in cluttered farewells
woods thump djembe rhythm
I dance

 

Let me introduce you to Dark Donna. She is Good Donna's dark side. Dark Donna could have been something nifty, like a serial killer but, instead, she lets her darkness creep into her poetry and art (and the townsfolk live yet another day.)

What a thrill to capture a bright, innocent image and manipulate it until it morphs oddly across my computer screen. However, neither every word nor every image is dark. I often write of this small town life, where I grew up on southern porches, mesmerized by the storytellers. My Nanny and Poppy are faded now but their lives remain tucked away inside me, occasionally unfolded and smoothed lovingly into a poem.

Where do some of my images and the words come from? In my darkness times, they claw their way out of me. Memories surface chaotically and inspiration shakes off that river of muck, crawling ashore, wet-fingered and writing in the mud. Oh, that river can be deep and swift with bible-toting pastors, good deacons stomping on pews, and women--wholesome like blessed milk--crucified to the floor on crosses of hysteria, speaking in tongues. I recall the elderly Sisters and how they would fuss with these women's wayward hems, lest a plump thigh beckon the devil into the church.

I appreciate my twisted, religious upbringing. I have even come to relish the memories of my schizophrenic grandmother. Every dark, insane, and tragic tale, before my time and after, swims constantly toward me, grappling me, gasping for life. And I must save them all in my poetry, and slumber them soundly in the depths of subdued colors--curved submissively or straightened into dead lines.

But in the end my work is dim humor, dying in the light.