Kept under your bed is a rope of dried twigs,
Elderflower and lemongrass,
Exudes from the chipping paint.
Go, now;
Away from those who remember you leaning upon the neighbourhood postbox,
Next time, I’ll have younger skin.

That was before all the decisions.
Before the car was packed and
you drove with such a pain in your
knee.

That was the last time I was
thin and my hair was not yet
pink.

Before I knew you were around
the corner.  You were not yet
the last to set my mind reeling.

Tomorrow will see you wrapped
In the linen of your generation,
the symbol of a freed man.

Wallace Steven's predicted
you but I was not listening.
To be freed was not the point.
All that was before I saw the
exhaustion on my face.

Waylon Jennings here.
Full stop

Yet all my life foretold you.
The brave of you and the
blindness of my ever
singing anthem.

I leave you with s soft
flower

To

Wear

in your hair.

Caroline Shank
April of my discontent


4.20.2024

Green fingers roll down the hills
Embalmed with moss beneath the fingernails
Scratch marks on the clay path—where his brother lays to rest
Opal blues and hailstones, the colour of his tie, sitting
Loosely around his tanned neck and unshaven collar

Caro mio ben, Credimi almen.

He sips his cup with an assertion of an immortal wedding
Where cane sugar and hydrangeas line his bathtub
With his brown feet upon quartz tiles, he washes the salt that lines
His spine, his perspired forearms are bronzed and leathery
He sobs the Roman chant under the fountain

Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio, e dello Spirito Santo. Amen.

Eyelids like Terracotta tiles, painted with Salted Wood,
In this Bohemian Magnificence—an appearance of Golden Chrome;
A Contradiction sits in Unconventionality, a Promise of Lovers
In Winter Graves and Spring Cemeteries.

Let the Late Summer Rains flourish the Commas like Grasseeds;
Reap, Sow, and Weep;
Reaped, Sowed, then Wept.

To Whom do you Owe these Trumpet Glares and Immaculate Phrasing?
(Where are the Trumpet Mutes and Wine Glasses?)
Life in the Divine is Life in Vienna—
Life à Douleur resembles Mourning in June.
Show me the Way to go Home—Public, Corporeal Adorations in the Backseat,
Turn left on Palmerston, past Sicilian Cigars and Creole Shrimp;
Towards the Striped Pillowcases and Vaulted Ceilings!
Adorned with our Reflections, of Dried Lavender and Baby’s Breath,
The open Windows let in the Damp Fragrance of Purple Elixirs.

Your Lips, Your Lips Beacon to Tell of my Oriented Past—
And when Midnight comes ‘round, Your Eyes Project my Adolescent Self.
Where did you Find Him?

(You Clutched my Rosary of Constellations in your Left Hand.)

A resonant gratitude streams through my veins,
Consecrated to my middle school heroines, deflecting
The whispers of shame.
But they taught me that I do not have the luxury of shame;
I have a voice, and I must amplify it––that’s what my mother said.

Elles m’ont protégée, blossoming my oneness.
I am here now because of them, I harness their divine feminine
Strength.

Standing on the bones of my aunties, their anguish travels up,
Their histories following suit.
Beneath my feet, to my knuckles; charging my inner being
My spine is rigid, fortified with the duty––
To liberate, to reform, and to love.
“But my love,” she tells me earnestly, “this love, has been assumed,
Taken for granted, blended into the background of the White man’s portrait.”

My dun skin lives in the ambiguity of praise and prejudice,
And my sisters are dead. Exploited, first––then dead.
As were my mother’s grandmothers, when the Britons drew the line.
The assembly line, however, was an American invention––
Where the American Dream came to fruition. Commodified neatly,
‘Cheaply’ produced, and easy to swallow: fine [Black*] American craftmanship!

Her tomb
Stone, will be mined by her brothers.
He is unearthing the buried history, but forced to push coal into the fire,
Cremating the legacies of his own kin.

“So what are you going to say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?”
Her lasts words, found amongst the ashes.

The olive dusk tents overheard,
pleated, wavering, starless,

ghostly, embossed with moon,
scratched with street light.

Cars hunt across a new ice blanket,
casting tambourine shakes

onto the pavement as they brake
in cherry arrays. Tonight I watch

my neighbors in their curious coves,
each jaundiced room a flat Argus eye,

as they bed down, break off
the lamp network, pull blinds down

over myriad invisible couplings.
I have hesitations in the dark.

I see the neon-breasted giants
towering towards midnight

in this aching pavilion.
Like prisoners we send messages

with our mirrors.
At the Christmas market,

an etched man sells fake Egyptian
canoptic jars. "Viscera," he says,

"it holds your heart after you die."
The jar looks like it was carved

last week by a bored child.
Even if our hearts shrunk

to apricot pits, abandoned,
betrayed, disappointed, this jar

couldn't hold even one.
Still, I consider it for a moment.

But the olive tent is waving to me:
no sale, no sale, no sale.