Page 76 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #5

67
Ways to
Sear a Soul
Wings grow from a family’s broken hope. Their only daughter baptized in gas and kerosene
burst into flames but did not scream. These days, I drink broth the color of a woman
I kissed in my dreams when
I was ten. She sparkled like soda popping against new air. I am lost,
fear she will not visit again. Years
are slow emergency vehicles. Your chest arrives packed in ice. After a thousand bombs,
feet will tickle the sand at market’s
re-opening. The strawberry still can taste
sweet. Flowers wave like hands to someone leaving.
Parenting Roulette
In a sandpaper box, the dead
stare up from inside frames, reluctant as lungs to cut the cord.
Yolks were needed
in the recipe of our cells. You and I foot
ladders to climb skies of violets
songs, congas and rap songs chiseled into tiles of DNA. When I was
ten, I barely had time to pack.
My mother had swallowed the jewel
of cataclysm, gave birth to gypsies.
Now, we build scaffolds
in the germline of mitosis, our autonomes dancing to samba and Eminem
while we weren’t watching.
terri muuss