Rouse the fallen trees around you.
Remember how death splinters your jaw.
Slide out tiny javelins from between your teeth and
hurl them at the girl passing by.
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Tag Archives: dysfunctional families
NaPoWriMo Poem #30: Letters to Alice
There is a crack in everything,
that’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen
I.
I first began to believe in darkness
when I was seven: it was made out of thirty minutes
spent inside of a closet. Thirty minutes
painted without light, the bowels of a mouth
that would not let me go. This was discipline,
Dad turned inside out, freeway nerves
too crowded and jammed to let little girl electricity
pass safely through. Sometimes, I am still inside,
waiting for the tongue beneath my feet to
roll me backwards down a rabbit hole –
and when I land, there will be no potion, no key,
no magic cake, and no door.
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NaPoWriMo Poem #26: Box
There is a box. It is
wooden, a mistreated servant made out of
rot and blood stains. It holds
some of my years, the ones where
the mirror looked like broken teeth and empty
bedrooms. Sycamore legs that looked like
fear, shaking and stripped of bark to show
the white underneath. Prom nights, spent at home,
full of wishes that I could emerge, full-winged, instead of
an earthbound thing, soft and hairy, many-legged, with a upturned belly
like a dog’s fear gone white and asking for teeth. And a
tattered gospel, its chapter and verse preached to me
in slaps and insults.
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