November 17-23, 2014: David Flynn and Victoria Elizabeth Ruwi

The tired poem

The tired poem.

Here it is.
There it was.
Now it’s over.

I am so tired I’m still asleep though walking.
When I speak I snore.
When I look I look inward.
There stands a man I knew twenty years ago,
holding a marmot.
Vegamite.
Weeguns.
Pupoles.
The mind connects where it wants to connect.
I am so tired I can’t finish this poem.

Let it be endless.
After I die, you keep adding lines,
and your son/daughter
grandson/granddaughter
greatgrandson/greatgranddaughter
greatgreatgrandson/greatgreatgranddaughter
greatgreatgreatgrandson/greatgreatgreatgrandaughter
greatgreatgreatgreat
greatgreatgreatgreatgreat

My Sister in Chains

Chains skitter
between six male
bodies in blue
cotton uniforms.
They walk in line,
to front row seats
in the jury box,
while my sister
chained to
other women
enters to sit
in the second row.
I want to wave
or nod my head,
but restrained
I look at her
dressed in county
blue shirt and pants;
look at her face,
its lines lightened
by the eight days
of sobriety
jail has given her.
Signs warn:
Gesturing
to prisoners
is illegal.
I stare at her
wrists bound in chains.

Couples Skate

His arm enveloped my gawky freckled frame
even before Couples Only was announced:
Around and round and round we went forever
seeing the faces of other seventh-grade girls
who had to stay off the ice unless some boy,
any boy asked them to skate. But I had Ben,
the boy I met at the dance last week–a boy
two inches taller and two grades above me.
Ben, unzipped jacket flaring, canine teeth
slightly longer than his other teeth, smiling
as our blades swirled ice past fearful
faces of seventh- and eighth-grade boys
staring at the sidelined girls waiting for them.
We watched our separate breathing
mingle in the space between our bodies
where our arms were swinging,
where our fingers locked together,
where we wished we could be.
He rewrapped his arm around me,
his hand finding its way through the layers
of ski jacket, wool sweater and cotton
turtleneck to squeeze my warm bared waist.
Coupleless skaters returned to the ice
as Ben led me behind the soda machine,
leaned all of his taut body and mouth
into me, giving me my first taste
of testosterone driven tongue.