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AJ Jun 2013
I was always weirdly rebellious as a child.
As a teen I never pierced my tongue,
Snuck boys over the house,
Or stole candy bars from the convenience store.
Not me, when I was little
I would refuse to take my naps.
I'd fake sleeping and then sit there and hum to myself,
Waiting for my matka to come back and check on me.
I cut my own bangs,
Even when I was five.
Even when I was five the day before school pictures.
Matka wasn't pleased.
I didn't want to learn the Polish I was being taught.
I wanted to be different.
I didn't want chocolate milk like everyone else.
I wanted plain milk,
Not sweet milk.
Everyone liked sweets.
I didn't like the sun,
Because everyone liked the sun.
I liked the rain.
I wanted to be different.
My favorite word was podnóżek.
Do not be fooled,
It is nothing pretty.
It means footrest.
I liked it because it was different.
I wanted to be a rebel.
The coolest rebel of all.
One who fakes her naps, cuts her hair, drinks plain milk, and enjoys the word footrest.
The coolest rebel of all.
C S Cizek Sep 2014
Saturday alone on a love seat
for two with my roommate
plucking away at twisted nickel
across the room.

Unshowered, unmotivated,
a maybe Monday.

My clean laundry's a footrest
for ***** feet fresh off the
almost autumn asphalt.
Come visit us.

Be unshowered and unmotivated
on this maybe Monday.

Don't worry, the door's unlocked.
There's just a few hundred
flamingos waiting to get in,
but they should move

at the sound of your unshowered,
unmotivated, maybe Monday footsteps
It's 2:54 PM and I haven't done ****.
[light.]

—And then I realize I’ve been breathing in through a cigarette.
Like again before, the violence of reality, its press of revelation.
Rush to write before it fades.

[drag.]

My Muscles could be putty (non anent my lungs
to soot); another year of breath and fight past,
another year to revisit me, its Tocks, it’s to
“Keep lithe to be left living after its descent.”
*******, I’ve been saying that for years,
—now that I’m older—*******,
I’m talking about every kiss I’ve forgotten,
that is, everything we lose on way to Adulthood.
It’s unique, the imago state; most betokened of
His image, right? We are social creatures, too.
This year descends with the sand-bag weighting of
its guests, demons, its music and oxford commas.
And like every student here, inches of brick between
their sod-sleeping heads—I’m getting puttied muscles.
Grandfather clocks could only measure the pace
of time dripping from filter to lip right now.

[drag.]

So, out with it! Outwith disclaim and excuse!
Did these calendars and turmoils bide
inside, waiting? And I carried on dumb?
No, I couldn’t face it. To have any brag
or claim on consciousness you couldn’t.
And brag is the stuff of home and placement.
Too, I felt placed, and set, and spoilt, like
a full-soled step was took each step.
And then the rain came Sunday,
I knew a full periphery again, all that;
And now the center, too.

[drag.]

Berthed I become as I imagine the sky cloud.
Fixin’ to rain war and revelation.
This earth is a battlement now, I’ll fight.
The rolled cigarette, violent reality,
sweetly slipped into my mouth.
I never want to sound conclusive
(assertions, pretensions): keep repeating:
I’m just a sensitive thinker.
No better than like a decade’s
worth of culture, every conclusion
becomes irrelevant and useless
like an old law. An old decade
is entirely the footrest of the new,
and just as sturdy as He makes it.

[drag.]

I never understood the value of a dollar
‘till inside a tower over the campus
I tasted the thousand-dollar crime
of Security & Maintenance for climbing
a building. Tuition’s, now, an inkwell;
($)30,000 unmarked, illiterate words
and too much say with one bottle.
Same, too, with one purchase.
But still the shame of confusion
is an education in and of itself.
Confusion as useless as the future
and old criminals acquitted.

Take on another [name], any other,
so that God can call out to you
in the night.
Well, I’m learning.
between this poems…[sic]
I’ve learned that names are your own,
so name the un-cut, -construed past
and all it is you, for safe-keep, see.
I’ve learned that a capitonym
is God by any other name :
Hope, Love-lorn, Terror.

Monistically, I’ve learned there is only
us, the namers, for so our charge was:
whatever the man called each living
creature, that was its name.
And
that’s gotten us a lot of places,
i.e. hubris, tragedy, undoing.
But it’s its very syllables that undo.
So whisper. Snarl if needed. But
tack that trouble to tree and let it bleed.
This is your deer, your grace and past.
Yes, rotting there is your former muscle
and ideals, all prelude to this very moment.
Just as real and violent as when alive,
yourself, and yet confrontable,
yourself.

[drag.]

[extinguish.]

[exeunt.]
Icarus M Feb 2013
As she sits there silently,
rocking back and forth
to and fro
in her wooden rocking chair.
Her eyes closed,
head pressed firmly into the patterned blue cushion,
pushed by her tense fists
that grip each sidearm
and threaten to leave marks
into the dullard rich grain
that smells like "childhood"
covered in dust mites.
Her feet propped up
on a matching rocking stool,
it's a set.
She used to lie flat on her stomach,
with her feet on the chair,
and her belly on the footrest,
backwards...I'm flying.
Now she's grown,
too awkward,
too sad.

He sits there
in an armchair
drooping with age
with memories sewn into its brown decor.
Smells like basement
and home.
Feels like creativity
when life wasn't so hard.
When its cushion and pillows held back the world
and a blanket provided a ceiling, that drooped,
until it plopped on his face
And he would climb out and fix it
because inside,
he was safe,
and happy.
Now,
his feet would be cold
and his head would break the roof
not that he has the imagination anymore
nor the time.

Sitting there,
with fingers dead
and withered
crackling dry,
voice depressed
heaving sighs with every sentence
and a general gloom about the room.
Perfectly still,
entirely quiet,
that stems from silence that is only apparent
after a presence has left
shed from a carcass growing cold
born anew to live a life till stretched and old
now a red neon sign lit up,
*"Vacancy."
© copy right protected
Terry Collett Jul 2013
Anne sat in the wheelchair
in the huge back garden
of the nursing home.
The stump of her leg ached,

the one good leg rested
on the footrest. She rubbed
the stump as if this might
ease the aching. She’d get

Skinny Kid to push her out
of the back gate when she saw
him, he was one of the few
kids who seemed to like her,

and often did things for her
where others wouldn’t.  
The little girl named Sadd
was like a fairy: thin, gaunt

looking, whose shoulder blades
stuck out like small wings.
She was on one of the swings
being pushed by one of the

nursing nuns. Where was
Skinny Kid? she mused. His sister
was over by the slide going up
and sliding down. The boy called

Malcolm was hiding in and out
of the avenue of trees playing
war games with some other boy
with a snotty nose. She wheeled

herself along the stony path.
How’s your leg? a girl with burn
scars on her arms and shoulders asked.
Why don’t you ask the fecking leg,

Anne replied roughly. The girl stared
at the impression of the stump just
under Anne’s dress. I’ll tell Sister
you swore, the girl said. Go kiss your

****, Anne said. The girl ran off and
Anne wheeled herself a little more
along the path. Then she spotted him,
Skinny Kid, coming out of the French

windows at the back of the nursing home.
Hey, Kid, she bellowed, over here.
Benedict walked over to where Anne
was sitting, her hands on the wheels

of the chair.  What did you want?
he asked. Push me out the back gate,
she said, I can’t stick being out here
with all theses kids. Ok, he said and

pushed her along the path, between
the avenues of trees to the back gate.
Where are we going? he asked as they
reached the gate and he opened it up

and pushed her through. Along by
the beach, I need the sea air, need
to fill my lungs with it, she said.
He pushed her along, his arms

feeling her weight, his legs like
small pistons. Thanks, she said,
for helping me in and out of the
bath the other night. That’s ok,

he said, recalling her calling him
into the bathroom the other night,
she standing on her one leg by the
bath in a white towel. Help me in

Kid, she had said, I don’t want
one of those nuns touching me while
I bath. He had helped her in trying
to avoid looking at her naked body

as she put her leg over then he had
to ease her down making sure the
stump didn’t bang against the bath rim.
He closed his eyes, having caught a

glimpse of the stump on its way into
the water. He pushed the wheelchair
along the smooth path, avoiding the
other people, trying to hear her mouthed

instructions, watching the top of her
dark haired head. She had said he had
to wash her back in the bath as she
couldn’t reach and he did it softly not

wanting to scratch her or such. Harder
than that, Kid, she had said, I want to
feel the skin rubbed not fecking tickled.
So he scrubbed harder, looking at her

neck and her damp hair.  Hey, Kid,
she said breaking into his thoughts,
got any money on you? I’ve  got half
a crown, he said. Then buy us two ice

creams, Kid, over there, the guy who
looks Italian in that van. So he pushed
her over to the van and bought two
ice creams with strawberry sauce and

he sat on the wall with her parked
beside him licking their ice creams
in silence except for the sound of gulls
and the sea going in and out pushing

the waves up the shore, she watching
the Kid, his tongue white with ice-cream,
his eyes bright as summer. Her stump
ached still; she’d get the Kid to rub it after

the ice creams; feel his hands on her skin,
as she sometimes dreamt, he did in her dreams.
Based on episodes at a children's nursing home by the sea in 1958.
i wanted to erase all of it. .

Removing tear sick about you. .

About someone who never hurt me. .

About someone who always erase any hopes. .



You came uninvited,

Prints memories for the sake of memories,

Leaving a footrest without meaning,

Which makes me think it is just an illusion. .

But it does not mean,

Like an old paper, burned by fire.



If you understand,

That existence means to me,

like the sun is always shining on the earth pobud,

But that was then,

Long before you leave the self alone,
The Terry Tree Jan 2014
This is a gift
that cannot be wasted
our breath to it pass
through our lung
it is tasted
and in matters so scantly
do our questions unanswered
sleep quietly at the footrest
of paradise

We are moments awaiting to happen
a gift that can hardly be wasted

© tHE tERRY tREE
I don’t want to watch the wallpaper yellow.
The floral patterns cause vertigo,
while the hallways whisper
gospel sounds
and talk of gelatin for dessert.

I’m afraid that when I fall for another man,
he will have a shearling wheelchair.
Or,
he will be a caregiver
raising the crooked footrest.

There won’t be quinoa substitute
or aperitif.
My meals will likely be
a glass of sulfur water and
mixed vegetables dressed in gravy.

Derived from a cheap grocery list
where my name is written
In between “milk” and “flour”
Because I was not remembered.
from "Evenings In Jackson Heights"
Final Call  



The screen flickered in the hush of enveloping dark,  
Michael Douglas pacing, his fate unraveling—  
Fatal Attraction, a movie about consequence,  
its shadows pressing forward.  
But beneath the flickering flames, something was wrong,  
settling into my gut like a held breath,  
bending the air—quiet rupture, breath held too long.  

Five minutes home, five minutes into loss.  
Five minutes stretched thin and hollow,  
filled with the weight of dread and waiting,  
filled with the road wounding back to her—  
wounds layered in time, mapped upon fragile feet,  
circling through lineage, waiting in blood.  
Filled with my world shifting.  
My world already shifted.  

The neighbors had already assembled in solemn witness,  
most tight-lipped, others yielding to grief in sobs and silence.  

There was Bill Edwards, the neighbor across the way,  
broad-shouldered, his southern drawl flickering,  
caught between words. Marlene, his portly wife,  
her red hair dimmed beneath the porch light.  
Bernie, their next-door pal, shifting, too large  
for the doorway. Shirley, his second wife, thin,  
arms folded inward, already bracing against absence,  
looking like she had lost the most fragile thing in her life.  

Then movement—the EMTs carrying her body past them,  
in a white nightgown that ended primly just above her knees,  
not in the grandma style she hated,  
but with a quiet grace between youthful innocence  
and the dignified ease of womanhood,  
an elegy stitched into fabric, neither ostentatious nor meek,  
reflecting beauty that lingered, pride that refused to fade.  

The gown bore food stains but no blood. And  
as she passed fully before me,  
her eyes were wide open, lips parted  
in a smile caught between a gasp  
and the ghost of a smile—everything  
lingering between this world and the next,  
frozen, like her, in a moment that never completed itself.  

Ed, my stepdad, stands lost in the doorway,  
his shock sealing him in place,  
his body answering to nothing,  
his stare hollow until it finds me.  

And there—her beige Lazy Boy,  
its footrest still half-kicked from the final trembling,  
handgrips marked by the last imprint of her touch,  
the whole chair pressed with her final form in the fabric.  
The matching chair was untouched, still waiting.  

The television murmurs onward,  
Tom Brokaw, his voice unfazed, reciting history,  
the U.S. and Soviet Union signing a nuclear treaty…  

The world still carrying on.

                                       2

The ambulance pulls away, its lights dim,
not flashing, just retreating—
just driving away,
first a roar, then an echo, then silence.
  
The neighbors start to leave,
offering the usual condolences,
the usual earnest offers of help,
the gestures of grief  that
vanish with the closing of doors,

leaving my stepdad and me
in the almost empty house,
the quiet hum of the house…

And with my younger mentally disabled brother, Casey—
alone upstairs, unaware of mom’s death below,
the murmurs and hands clutching shoulders,
oblivious to the slow procession of mourning,
unaware of the neighbors streaming in and out
in shocked sobs that fold into the walls,
unaware that the one thing that loved him the most
is gone.

I want to call to him, to tell him—  
but the weight of it presses against my throat.  
How do you explain absence to someone  
who has only ever known unconditional presence?  
How do you break the world open like that,  
cut a line through someone’s understanding of love  
and expect them to move forward as if nothing has changed?  

I watch as Ed wipes the last streak of tears  
with the tips of his fingers,
then drag his hand through his forever-gray hair—  
gray since the moment my mother met him,  
gray for every memory I carry of him.
  
The tears have left his face shallow,
heightening his resemblance to Herman Munster
that my mom, myself and the other two kids-
a sister who lives in Alaska, and a brother
lingering between a move from Texas to Colorado-
would kid him constantly about.

The joke was effortless then—  
a source of warmth, an anchor of familiarity.  
Now, I see only the exhaustion in it,  
the quiet collapse of something once harmless,  
the way grief distorts even the gentlest things.

But tonight, the joke is hollow.  
the house, emptier than before.  
And within it, everything that laughter has left behind.

He stumbles into the next big concern,
letting every one know what had happened—
my brother and sister, his two sons
from his first marriage,
one in Chicago, the other chasing Hollywood dreams.

Yet, before he speaks,
he exhales—long, slow—    
as if steadying himself against the weight of it all,  
his hand hovering over the chair’s armrest,  
uncertain, unwilling to disturb  
what was left exactly as she had last touched it.  

Then, the decision.  
He reaches into the left-side pocket  
of her Lazy Boy, pulling out her old address book.  
Its worn pages, folded corners,  
the ink of her handwriting still pressed deep.

He stares at the first number.  
A breath. A pause.  

Then, he dials.  

                                   3

Her absence lingers, curling into corners,  
softening the edges of untouched cups,  
settling into the folds of sheets that will not be remade.  

Her scent—warm spice and detergent—  
clings to the hallway,  
woven into the fabric of the chair that held her.  
Not entirely gone. Not entirely here.  

Even in silence, she speaks:  
A pair of socks with grip bottoms under the table,  
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation left spine-up on a nightstand,  
a grocery list half-scribbled in her hurried hand—  
as if time had paused mid-thought,  
as if the world had allowed one last unfinished line.  

But time does not pause.  
The television hums forward,  
Tom Brokaw shifts to the next news report,
something beyond  the treaty signed,
ink binding nations to restraint.  

And yet, no restraint was given here—  
not to the body unraveling,  
not to the moment that collapsed too soon.  
In a world of precision, she was a miscalculation,  
a faltering equation wrapped in fragile flesh,  
a quiet failure against something too vast to undo.  

I wonder if  what I inherit is more than memory,  
something beyond the way illness carves paths,  
the  denying the way blood carries warnings.  
Each footstep echoes hers,  
each glance at my own hands  
reveals the future she left behind.  

All conversations we never had,  
All questions I never asked—  
Did she know?  
Did she wonder if I would carry this weight?  
Did she hold her own hands in the quiet and wish  
they were not the blueprints of mine?  

And yet, the world is unmoved.  
It does not ask. It does not answer.  

The road outside hums with motion,  
cars rolling forward into the evening.  
Neighbors retreating indoors,  
their grief folded into the rhythm of routine.  

And still—  

The world carries on.
  
                                   4  

Upstairs, the television hums—Baryshnikov gliding  
in white, his movements sharp yet fluid,  
an elegance sculpted in repetition.  
Casey mirrors him, his fingers tracing  
the weightless air, his feet shifting softly—  
a language of motion, untouched by grief.  

I stand in the doorway, the words heavy  
on my mind. The room is a collision—  
rolled up Disney posters on shelves,
glossy brochures of concept cars on his desk,  
beige ballet slippers folded neatly beside  
die-cast models of Mustangs, Corvettes,
on his bureau and nightstands  
the sleek curve of imagined speed.  
Each piece of his world, a fragment,  
a comfort—unchanged, unshaken.  

“Are we leaving soon?” he asks,  
his eyes locked on the screen,  
his breath syncing to the tempo  
of a dancer who understands flight.  

I nod, my throat tight.  
His mind is ahead of me,  
chasing movement, chasing the next step,  
the space between absence and understanding  
still unformed, untouched.  

He twirls his fingers, slow, deliberate.  
He smiles. “I want to show Mom my routine.”  
His joy untouched, whole.  

I inhale. How do you tell someone  
that everything has shifted?  
That love remains, but presence does not?  
That the shape of memory now holds  
all that she was, all that she’ll ever be?  

A flicker—his face tightens,  
a brief tremor, his brows furrowing  
as if the rhythm has faltered,  
as if something in the air has unsettled  
the shape of his movements.  
For a second, I see it—  
a shadow of understanding,  
a glimpse of absence—  
and then, the rhythm returns.  

His hands lift again,  
his feet shift, gentle echoes of Baryshnikov’s grace,  
not the jumps, but the hands,  
the sweep of fingers across invisible space,  
the pull and release of breath  
as if the dance itself could replace  
what is missing.  

And then: “I have rehearsal tonight.”  
His voice steady, matter-of-fact.  

The world is still moving.  

I nod again. “Let’s go.”  

The strip mall is quiet,  
the dance studio tucked between  
a dry cleaner and a bakery,  
its windows humming with light.  

Casey steps in—comfortable, certain,  
a boy in motion, a boy untouched by hesitation.  
The music begins, soft and nostalgic,  
not ballet, not classical precision,  
but something simpler.  
A slide, a rhythm, a quiet homage.  

His feet move with certainty,  
his body following something beyond technique—  
something felt, something known.  

The instructor watches, nods.  
"This is the best he's ever done."  

And I stand there, unmoving,  
watching him, watching the echoes of her  
in the way he lifts his arms,  
the way his posture carries an unspoken grace.  

My chest tightens.  

He is more than what they expected.  
More than the limits they imposed.  
More than the shape of words  
they used to measure him.  

The duet begins—the instructor guiding,  
Casey following,  
his body folding into something  
greater than motion, greater than memory—  
a love pressed into every step,  
every shift of weight,  
every breath between the beats.  

He danced for her.  

And will dance for her always.

— The End —