my cigarette burns a hole in my couch
i don’t feel his hands lift my nightgown
pull down my panties
just weight, rip, gone
plaster, sheetrock, paint flakes,
wall and ceiling’s seam, its lip, swells
an insignificant fissure, silver fish
pillows between thighs in case he comes again
ceiling, peeling with misgiving and shadow—
glasses gone—can’t see a thing
Without the rumble of lava, the chewing
I’d have only silence to wake me
In the night, no distraction,
Only a deep inhalation, unreleased
Pending a heavy shadow on the stair,
A silhouette against the hallway light.
Trust utters not a word
As it splinters the houses of Pompeii.
The door to my childhood home sits level
on slanted wood
you barely notice it
In the photograph of me in a cream-colored
gunny-sack dress
green ribbon corseting my ribs
leashing up my throat
What you do notice is my socks
their bleaching gleam
how they yellow the dress
make the fur of my baby legs dark
against tanned skin
And how one sock slouches to my calf
because I kicked, with shiny shoes,
my mother’s shin when she tried
to pull it right
My flared nostrils, my squinted right eye,
captured in the flash of perpetuity
I smiled for the camera
When you finally recognize me,
please kneel on the solid yellow line
of the road’s center, an urban pew,
humble enough to bear the weight
of your ignominy, sturdy enough to hold
your burden, your love and rubble,
every crushed thing between
asphalt and denim, yes, kneel.
I eat an extra cookie because it smells of wet earth and the past.
Now, the future happens.
$7.09 for tampons, cigarettes, compliment a woman
on her bright yellow shoes and let cat fur linger on my feet.
stolen coffee refills, a guitar solo so loud it vibrates teeth.
I eat quiche to the power of Rudolph Nureyev’s thighs,
a George Herbert poem while watching the weatherman,
who gets paid masses more than the masses, get it wrong
75% of the time; I think of your knuckles,
each pore of skin a dark black hair like cardinals
and church bells in the distant night and I turn off
my bed lamp convinced that you caused the heat
lightning that night outside the subway.
Lisa Sisler is the editor of Knocking at the Door: Approaching the Other, a poetry anthology from Birch Bench Press, an imprint of Write Bloody Books, and the assistant editor of OVS magazine. She received her MA in English from Rutgers University and her MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as RadiusLit and Contemporary American Voices. She teaches Writing and Literature at Kean University and at various other colleges in New Jersey where she resides with her boyfriend and their cat army.
ISSUE:
W I N T E R
2011-2012
ART FEATURE:
An Introduction
to Deltiology
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