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Christine Ueri Apr 2015
In the hours of your discontent
Cut through the lining of my womb --

Each gush a new red lotus
In the snow white tub
Of all our winters
Water thins the Blood
Blood taints Water
  
In the hours of your discontent
Linger in the scent of iron petals

Flaccid limbs around your neck--
An embrace
A noose
A loosened tourniquet

In the hours of your discontent . . .
26/04/2015
  Apr 2015 Christine Ueri
spysgrandson
I will bring you concord grapes,  
for you like the color of them, and I the way
your cheeks move when your mouth
is full of them  

I will cut the meat for you,
in thin slices, as razor narrow as the knife
will allow

the nurses tell me
to let you feed yourself
to gain your strength
back

but we, just you and I,
know your arms will become more flaccid
with each passing night, and no amount
of measured movement, will make
that right

I will make the soft cloth wet, warm  
and caress the dirt away, for they scrub you
like palette or canvas, painted all wrong

I will brush your hair,
a hundred strokes each eve,  
as you did, before your amber waves
turned wistful white, and your limbs
went limp

I will read you stories
of children at play, lads and lasses
who never grow gray

I will bring apples
for your wooden bowl  
but we don't dare slice them
for they are there for us to watch
to help us remember red, round things,
beginnings, in a world before this room
of endless ending
Christine Ueri Apr 2015
an apparition in our grade one classroom door
obscured save for the halo around your head
. . . must've been the sunlight

playing with the curves of your curls
you said I wrote sentences
that would've made your grade threes weep . . .
and I was someone I didn't know existed before

someone who could write more than curved lines and straight lines
someone who played with words at break
while the other children ate protein-packed sandwiches

between chalkboard dust-clouds and sweeping up pencil shavings
I stayed in for athletics, looked through the classroom window,
searched the oak tree outside for a vision of the painted elf
I un-tacked from a perpetual race on the circular classroom weather board

see, I couldn't run with only one healthy kidney
when I just came out of hospital
where doctors cleaned their instruments in kidney-shaped dishes
my friend, June, still slept in the next hospital bed --
I hoped she wouldn't die the way Maria did --
while I read Jack and the Beanstalk

Mrs Louw asked how I had learnt to read English
I couldn't tell her -- it was something that just happened
the same way I discovered I despised steak and kidney pies
because I couldn't eat my own sickness
09/11/2014
Christine Ueri Mar 2015
He is the preacher's son;
I am the weapons keeper's daughter.

He stood in the blood of the holy ghost;
I stood in the blood of a man's own slaughter.

Did you take the holy water?

I am the weapons keeper's daughter;
I stand in the ghost of man's own slaughter;
He is the preacher's son, standing in the ghost of the holy One.

Did you take the ****** water?
06/04/2014
Christine Ueri Mar 2015
The synchronized mechanics of it all
Remind me:
We were meant to be running naked and free beside each other.
Fearless.

This phenomenon
needs nothing.
It already existed,
long before we were born
to this nine and twenty two equals four.

Long before our names were given,
we were, and we will continue to be
long after we've named the next generation.

Long after the seeds we've sown
have grown and died, and sown their own,
we will continue to be.

But for now:

I am tired of raised fists.
Tired of fighting for what is right
and the right to be wrong.

I’m tired and worn out:
The warrior’s bone marrow has slowed, curdled the blood
that will always carry a sacred bow,
a sacred arrow

But for now,
I am tired of raised fists.

I want to plant you a sacred forest,
lay down the sacred lines of the earth,
sit around a sacred fire,
shape-shift all the plastic christmas trees,
the caked mascara massacres.

Where there is no garbage choking flowers,
Children are free to be children
Mothers are free to be mothers
Fathers are freed from being soldiers,
and there, there is no such thing
as an almost-
human.

The longing to go home,
to be alive again
rages with the current,
whispers to grieve no more.

The time will come.
Wait.
Listen for their footsteps.

But carry on

hearing their laughter in the wind
feeling their warmth in the sun
kissing them in the rain
loving them in dreams,
knowing that we will always walk together,

even when we are scattered
into this grayness
that glitters with fake gold dust and fresh blood speckles

deep within the darkness
is the light
where we found each other
long before we could find ourselves.
14/06/2012
Christine Ueri Mar 2015
I shall be
small --
a particle of dust

carried

colliding

collecting

in a tiny sandstorm
with other particles of dust
individually laced
through the eye of Eve's Needle
Cactus, sharp, squinting
against the light

a dash

on a waxed dune

a nuance

-- infinitely small
13/03/2015
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