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Ellie Hoovs May 21
She was busy counting wolves
conversing with crows
soft and white as a widow's linen.
They scoffed at her,
called her delicate,
only good for stew.
So she dug herself into stories,
buried beneath the noise
let them hunt after the myth of her,
never finding it.  
The forest swallowed her,
dried leaves and damp earth
scented with cinnamon
embracing her bones
in the hush of the underbrush.
She multiplied in silence
beneath the roots,
growing wild
through branches of wildflowers.
The thicket whispers a warning.
The hunters have gone missing,
and the doe-eyed jejune "varmint"
awakens whole, green with breath,
wild,
and never soft again.
Ellie Hoovs May 21
He inherited the tightly folded linens,
starched corners, brittle creases,
bleached until they could no longer recall
every harsh argument around the table
that held them.
Every hem had been stitched shut with silence.
Every stain scrubbed until the blood
resembled rust
and flaked away.
I run my fingers along the monogram,
stitched by hands that had swallowed their own fire,
and marvel at the paradox;
how simmering anger can still
make something so delicate.
She embroidered flowers
no one ever named,
roots turned sharp by willful ignorance.
white thread
on white cotton
"elegant" defiance.
You had to tilt it toward the sun
just to see the blooms.
He told me how on Sundays
she laid it on the table,
a weekly treaty,
a wound she dared anyone to set a plate on.
They never noticed, too busy carving the meat.
The white flag was already folded.
The surrender came with matching napkins.
Now he keeps it in a box
lined with cedar
and the scream he keeps folded beneath it.
I tell him:
use them
or burn them,
but never pretend they were clean.
neth jones May 19
dismember                        
the jerking flesh of my heart
nervous excrement
the manner your head rattles
when i lunge at you
this room stiffens with ****
                    running our corpses thru the flame
the gummy dark muffle day-to-night            
       pinball wisdom of creatures                    
                                   ­   below the floor
cactus salad
        me you and our malady
[notes : inspired by Remember  by Joyce Mansour]
neth jones May 18
dismember                          
the jamming fight of my breath
your reciting
the wit that exudes you
i hack mad laughs                      
the room becomes rude hot
              and we burst our fleshes
the seasons collect in some deafening syrup
but still the walls are music with vermin
mushroom tea       you and me
[notes : inspired by Remember  by Joyce Mansour]
Ellie Hoovs May 16
Time unfurled
a single yarn from the hem of a sweater
pulling apart the fabric of it.
Light consumed all darkness
until even the word shadow
held no weight.
The heavy weights of fear,
depression, and the impenetrable bruises
of lifelong aches,
melted,
like winter snow being touched,
at last,
by the spring sun.
A room awaits, made for me:
a coffee ***,
always full and warm with welcome.
A leather bound journal,
with ever-ready pages,
and a pen with ink made from my own veins
that always knows what to say.
An old fashioned is served up promptly,
at 7pm,
when my mother greets me at my door
and curls up next to me on the couch
we talk and laugh,
for hours inside a minute.
Candles glow with ambered remembrance.
Music plays the odes to journeys taken.
My grandfather fishes by a river nearby,
teeming with bass,
and I glimpse the child he never was
smile at me.
Every morning the ocean of my backyard
kisses my feet as she waves hello,
her salt no longer bitter.
I greet the blood of my blood
and bone of my bone upon the shore.
They wear faces that, through centuries
still resemble my own.
We tell stories around bonfires
of the legends that we were in our time.
My soul is made tangible.
I touch the fringes of my warrior spirit,
caress the edges of my creativity.
I dance with the stars before dawn
upon a floor made of crystalline moonbeams,
and marvel at how green,
how delicate,
how infinitesimal,
is the Earth below.
Ellie Hoovs May 15
Hat
He handed it to me when I was 25,
with a Cheshire cat smile,
knowing it wasn't my team,
and liking it all the better for it.
I wore it,
reluctantly,
the Kelly green of it a traffic cone
warning others not to get too close
brim worn thin
on the edges
where he was always
making sure it sat
...just.
right.
until the shamrocks stitched to the side
could no longer mask the shackles
I tore it off
set it ablaze in the front yard
and let my soft ginger curls
fly free in the breeze,
finally mine again.
Ellie Hoovs May 14
Snow falls, weaving lace from a forlorn sky
that caresses the tender edges of sand dunes.
Indigo waves buoy lamented lullabies,
filling empty drifting bottles
with salted cold foam.
Gulls screech,
shrill with curses
at the winking lighthouse
taunting the winged rats
with its cold, unreachable glow.
Silver threads of moon beams
luminesce the stardust under my feet;
my toes sink in as I pirouette
among other forgotten things:
bits of shell, braids of seaweed,
and stones of glass made smooth
by the ever-changing tides.
A clock washed ashore,
devoid of hands,
chimes notes for the unknown hour.
My footprints leave a path behind me
softly whispering my name
to the wind that welcomes me home.
neth jones May 13
i watch you counting yourself out                                         
                    courting little pets of body-parts
putting pennies on the trinket shelf            
talking with wending wordage            
                 about those gruff fellows
who've been pig-holing    about your dwelling

that day  you manage a back window  
                                           and escape                            
masquerade yourself  as a gentleman
but they sniff at your aromas       
              these men in crude season
they circle you hinge-hipping
as you fleet the roads and fields                        
and evade  into the dappling woods
"come on out  we have you surrounded"                              
(you say  they say)
you stay  crossed legged   a monk among trees
(these pleasing defenders)                                

you take off your dress  and string it
            from one of these trees
you dole yourself out                        
little pets for the undergrowth

           you offer a curled shrew
from the space   your kneecap once
                          occupied

you droop your warm left breast
and drop a beast from that cove
(a plump vole clambers  fresh and
                        disorientated)

you plug one arm into loose soil
                   and the fingers snake root
separation at the elbow                
              and branches sprig out

both your thighs   animate as fox cubs
your ***** leaves from between                  
                         and slinks under some ivy

your hair fiddles loose and travels off
in currents of breeze
before flitting into little finches

your back crumples with fungal looseness
your head weighs low                              
             and the jaw lumps off
shuffling   undecided on its form

your forehead bows  to kiss the earth
and your face scatters  a gaiety of insects  and spores

                  all arts patterned about
your pile continues   in this mattering manner
collapsing efficiently    
you've canonized in nature                    
now you’re abroad  mature and freed          
to tell your friend this story
a spirit  without brag of these neat powers
one with mother glory
ORIGINAL
i watch you counting yourself/putting pennies on the shelf/talking with wending/about those gruff fellows /who've been pig-holing about your dwelling/who circle you hinge-hipping /when you fleet the roads and fields/and INTO THE WOODS
Ellie Hoovs May 13
Mad
I caught the deep inky blue of it
in bottles
labeled 'pleasing'
and set them on a shelf
next to bowls full of tears
and baskets full of unwanted memories.
It was cold
aching like limbs in the winter
sip it,
let the ice unfurl,
bitter on your tongue,
grief catching
in your throat
before settling into the pit
of your stomach,
like a swallowed apple seed.
one day the winds came
knocking all of the bottles down
and all around in the broken air,
ruptured by the fragmented glass,
screams - starved and rising
screams shattering bone
screams - ringing
wild and ragged
at last.
Ellie Hoovs May 10
In the hush beneath powerlines,
through fractured stones,
no gardener knelt to bless them.
No springtime choir sang.
Still, golden heads rose,
leaning towards the shadowed light,
the kind filtered by clouds
like a half-remembered memory,
or a lullaby hummed to a ghost.
Roots thread through ruin,
tasting rust,
sipping rain
that fell before the world began.
They were never meant to be here.
And yet
yellow ablaze in the rubble.
A flicker. A flare.
The petaled armor of hope
unfurled against battle-smoked skies
as if the world exhaled
and breathed them into being.
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