I will follow you
Learn you like a new language and speak it religiously
It's easier to love a thing you don't know,
easy to fall head over heels
The things we do know, know us very well

You've found use for your head in these long days
Banging it against the wall, and keeping in time with the hands of the clock
When the battery runs dry you will use your imagination.

Five powerful privet hedges formed
a fence in our front yard in New York.
My mother planted them for some
reason, known only to her.

The branches grew sparse and suffered.
Failure to thrive.  Knee high to my
twelve year old body, it never bloomed
in that yard of green weeds and dandelions.

It was meant to keep the
dogs away.  We had feral cats
in the yard.  My brother and I
were feral.  My mother bred us
into the wind of 1940's Chicago.

So that was that for her.  She
retreated into madness from
Chicago to New York to
South Bend.

Fences, like my mother's
addictions, are not always seen.
They crawl up your leg like
flakes of hate.  They keep growing
until your eyes are holes in the
twigs.

A fence so thick you think
only prayers will let you out.
Easter Sunday blooms in
the trailers and filaments.

No relief.  They scratch
on your so small soul.  White
privet petals crawl into crevice
and crease.  

I no longer itch but
tic with the rhythm
of the seasons.


Caroline Shank

Where I live people tear garbage
bags apart and look for gold.
They wait in hordes along the road for safe passage home, and the sun torments them and the dust alike.
(Here) We are all somewhat cruel
No one leaves any gold to be found.
We wave and call out "goodbye" to homesick faces.
We mock the sun.

Dearest?
I peeled back my eyelids, and
belted out the sound that beasts make when giving birth to their young: a hollow, ungodly groan reminiscent of the time you set this place on fire and remembered that I was inside.
Now we are to break bread and speak. I say the sweetest things when there is someone to hear. Cover your ears, that would be best