New Year’s Celebration

Among mad men in drowning corridors,
built on rusty foundations,
tethered to rotting, sugar-coated
grins, and nestled in the trashcan
of our neighbor’s backyard –
a candle we cannot see burns
out over the mountains, the
ones draped in vacation photographs,
the same set your kitten is named after,
a geological setting, a historical
lesson, a discipline of chances
strewn into another’s handshake
sweat left on the public
bathroom door handle, a smudge
of lipstick left on the countertop,
next to powder – a scene
unimagined for nonexistent detectives.
In a drunken state, we decide to play
Gunshots or Fireworks?
And we laugh when we are wrong.

Published in The Quill on November 19, 2014:

http://www.amazon.com/Quill-Fall-2014-ebook/dp/B00PNVT6PG

...

On being overweight (whatever that means)

Even if you were the moon, they would complain about how much space you took up in the sky, how you were too bright, wanted too much from the stars, demanded more light than the others.

And when you shifted, from waning to full to waxing to waning, they would remind you of how instable you were, how much of a hassle it was to keep track of your instability, your need for attention. Have you tried to be a vegan yet? All the stars are doing it.

You have tried. In fact, last week was your third try – an attempt, they call it – not enough, they emphasize, try again, they say this as if it is encouragement.

That’s when you found them - the celestial crescent, the earthshine, the perilune, how the lacus are lakes without lakes, why the Gibbous is brighter either way, especially during conjunction – all strung together in pearls.  

You are a full the night you return.

As you reflect off the lake, you see Selene, Hecate, Mani, Tsukuyomi, Iah, and Thoth. You tell the stars to look, to breathe your reflection, to succumb to the glow and the beauty of it all, that you are not alone—

They laugh.

Say how historical that is, how out-of-touch you are, how myths aren’t mirrors, how you -  you are not a mystery at all.

But when you died – if you died – (we still do not know) - they do not wonder where you went. They spin, spin, spin the entire night home, only once confessing to how empty the sky is without your shine.

But every night they burn.

Published in The Quill on November 19, 2014:

http://www.amazon.com/Quill-Fall-2014-ebook/dp/B00PNVT6PG
...

To my Mother – 5643 days after your death

I still count the days, the amount of candles we burned, our unmade faces and her foamy latte – the kind with a drawn on design for no particular reason (other than to brag.)
I don’t worry about the perfume – the smell I do not remember – but I do open the windows, every. other. day.
The sunlight doesn’t burn anymore. My eyes still close. The moonlight blurs after hours of consciousness, and her dog’s birthday comes and comes and never stops but will. One day. Mine will never. Not at this rate. Although the calendar flips faster than I didn’t want it to, even though I did.

Glitter Rain shimmers outside my lightning window

            and winds a dream—weather of dreams and nightmares,

            a reign of indifference somewhere in between the windowpane,

            the widow pain, and the windy plain—to whisper possibilities

            into the nice night of nostalgic friends, wishing friendships hadn’t

            ended, knowing it had to end, glad it did end, ignoring the ending

            of all this time, ticking away in the timely thunderstorm of the



night.

...

Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.

...

This Waiting Place



The can of still is entirely sick.

Windows shatter and trucks collide

Threatens the over, yet becomes the not

Of which, of one, can you speak for?

.............I’ve never felt this way before.

Because glass gives reflections until it

Breaks.

Give me the pieces, the shards, the dust.

Let me take what I can take and walk away

With the shame of fault, the guilt of unknowing.

since analyzing the bodies won’t bring them back.

Limbo of shock or grey of wanting.

Since the can of answers can be given to the dead.


...

Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.

Inn-Sum-Knee-Ah (“Insomnia”)



I throw words at the ceiling fan

to break them apart over

the bleeding sheep on the carpet.


One. Two. Three. Four.


Pepper it over the bodies

while the fur is still waving

to the wind of the artificial air.


Five Six Seven Eight


My back cracks more than the

tocking insanity of the creak-squeak-squawk

crocked blame of the spinning blades above me.

I still can’t breathe.


Nine ten eleven twelve


The purple spot on the wall wanders between the bitter

clouds and the rocking streetlamps that wink,

as if to welcome me with “We are not sleeping either.”

But we will watch.


Thirteenfourteen.


That might be a good thing if I didn’t have my eyes closed,

burning from the inside out.


Fifteen. Sixtheen. Seventh

Sleep.


...

Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.

You

You are every bouquet left on graves.
You are the prayers of grievers. You are
the naïve spectators pretending, the tears
of those who haven’t lost. You are eyes
forcing yourself to look away. You’re the addiction
of a mother sitting on a trunk that hides medications.
You are the choice to overdose.
You’re the fear of two orphaned children,
wondering where they will be forced to go next. You
are the tragedy. You’re a simple combination of pills.
At the funeral they pray your death is like a novel, memorable yet learned from. You are like a novel. Events that end in a planned conclusion.
You are that second before the last pill, the medication,
an array of medication, a combination of medication, the last breath. You are the ***** of your husband’s soaking
into the carpet. You are a cry of a child
caused by the scare of a naïve nightmare.
The entire graveyard grieves with you.

...

I read at the University of Kansas during their Undergraduate Reading Series. Read more about this event here:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/02/11/my-undergraduate-reading/