Note: If you don’t want to read the introduction, you can skip down to the poem.
This is the first of hopefully six poems written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). It was also written for Read Write Poem Prompt #109: Beg, Borrow, Steal, which was a Wordle prompt. I managed to use a good percentage of words from the prompt.
I normally edit as I write (or try to) — but for this one, I found myself writing without an editor, from the more unconscious part of my mind (and perhaps, by extension, my heart), and then going back and editing later. If this seems less linear, that’s why. I also ended up taking my “ash golem” from my poem “Ashes” and bringing her into this poem. I hope you enjoy.
To see other poems for this mini-challenge, click here.
-Nicole
————————————————-
Drawing blanks and blood,
fertile-thighed, skin scarred, I am a
whalebone artist, carving my dreams in bone apocalypses
and shoving them behind my jaw. Wake up
when I’m twelve, and try rescue those school-day reveries
running in tape-loop, dream-sequence repeats before they
waterfall down my throat and slice vocal chords
into confetti as they fall for their own enjoyment. Thirty-three years old,
whipped into a existentialist froth, I now dare to seek
my old suit of skin that’s been hanging from the
low-bending branches of some lonely sycamore that
the steel mill in town forgot to poison. I see that it’s still wearing
pink, which I forgot how to be
a long time ago.
Continue reading
