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I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
Five minutes full, I waited first
In the doorway, to escape the rain
That drove in gusts down the common’s centre
At the edge of which the chapel stands,
Before I plucked up heart to enter.
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
Reached past me, groping for the latch
Of the inner door that hung on catch
More obstinate the more they fumbled,
Till, giving way at last with a scold
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
One sheep more to the rest in fold,
And left me irresolute, standing sentry
In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,
Six feet long by three feet wide,
Partitioned off from the vast inside—
I blocked up half of it at least.
No remedy; the rain kept driving.
They eyed me much as some wild beast,
That congregation, still arriving,
Some of them by the main road, white
A long way past me into the night,
Skirting the common, then diverging;
Not a few suddenly emerging
From the common’s self through the paling-gaps,
—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—
But the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chapel rallies
And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide their beastliness
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,
“Mount Zion” with Love-lane at the back of it,
They front you as little disconcerted
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
And her wicked people made to mind him,
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II

Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,
In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,
Like a startled horse, at the interloper
(Who humbly knew himself improper,
But could not shrink up small enough)
—Round to the door, and in,—the gruff
Hinge’s invariable scold
Making my very blood run cold.
Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
On broken clogs, the many-tattered
Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
Somehow up, with its spotted face,
From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
Already from my own clothes’ dropping,
Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
Planted together before her breast
And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
Close on her heels, the dingy satins
Of a female something past me flitted,
With lips as much too white, as a streak
Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
All that was left of a woman once,
Holding at least its tongue for the *****.
Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,
With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
And eyelids ******* together tight,
Led himself in by some inner light.
And, except from him, from each that entered,
I got the same interrogation—
“What, you the alien, you have ventured
To take with us, the elect, your station?
A carer for none of it, a Gallio!”—
Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
At a common prey, in each countenance
As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
And, when the door’s cry drowned their wonder,
The draught, it always sent in shutting,
Made the flame of the single tallow candle
In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
I verily fancied the zealous light
(In the chapel’s secret, too!) for spite
Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
With the airs of a Saint John’s Candlestick.
There was no standing it much longer.
“Good folks,” thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
“This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
But still, despite the pretty perfection
To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
And, taking God’s word under wise protection,
Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,—
Still, as I say, though you’ve found salvation,
If I should choose to cry, as now, ‘Shares!’—
See if the best of you bars me my ration!
I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
Of the laws of the feast, the feast’s own Founder;
Mine’s the same right with your poorest and sickliest,
Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,
And carve me my portion at your quickliest!”
Accordingly, as a shoemaker’s lad
With wizened face in want of soap,
And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
To get the fit over, poor gentle creature
And so avoid distrubing the preacher)
—Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
Received the hinge’s accustomed greeting,
And crossed the threshold’s magic pentacle,
And found myself in full conventicle,
—To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
On the Christmas-Eve of ‘Forty-nine,
Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
Found all assembled and one sheep over,
Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

III

I very soon had enough of it.
The hot smell and the human noises,
And my neighbor’s coat, the greasy cuff of it,
Were a pebble-stone that a child’s hand poises,
Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
Of the preaching man’s immense stupidity,
As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
To meet his audience’s avidity.
You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
No sooner our friend had got an inkling
Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
(Whene’er ‘t was the thought first struck him,
How death, at unawares, might duck him
Deeper than the grave, and quench
The gin-shop’s light in hell’s grim drench)
Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
As to hug the book of books to pieces:
And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
Not improved by the private dog’s-ears and creases,
Having clothed his own soul with, he’d fain see equipt yours,—
So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:
Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors
Appeared to suspect that the preacher’s labors
Were help which the world could be saved without,
‘T is odds but I might have borne in quiet
A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,
Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered
Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:
But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,
Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon
With such content in every snuffle,
As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.
My old fat woman purred with pleasure,
And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
While she, to his periods keeping measure,
Maternally devoured the pastor.
The man with the handkerchief untied it,
Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
Gave his eyelids yet another *******,
And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
The shoemaker’s lad, discreetly choking,
Kept down his cough. ‘T was too provoking!
My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;
So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
“I wanted a taste, and now there’s enough of it,”
I flung out of the little chapel.

IV

There was a lull in the rain, a lull
In the wind too; the moon was risen,
And would have shone out pure and full,
But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
Block on block built up in the West,
For what purpose the wind knows best,
Who changes his mind continually.
And the empty other half of the sky
Seemed in its silence as if it knew
What, any moment, might look through
A chance gap in that fortress massy:—
Through its fissures you got hints
Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,
Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy
Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,
Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,
All a-simmer with intense strain
To let her through,—then blank again,
At the hope of her appearance failing.
Just by the chapel a break in the railing
Shows a narrow path directly across;
‘T is ever dry walking there, on the moss—
Besides, you go gently all the way up-hill.
I stooped under and soon felt better;
My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,
As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.
My mind was full of the scene I had left,
That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,
—How this outside was pure and different!
The sermon, now—what a mingled weft
Of good and ill! Were either less,
Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;
But alas for the excellent earnestness,
And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,
But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,
However to pastor and flock’s contentment!
Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,
With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,
Till how could you know them, grown double their size
In the natural fog of the good man’s mind,
Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,
Haloed about with the common’s damps?
Truth remains true, the fault’s in the prover;
The zeal was good, and the aspiration;
And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,
Pharaoh received no demonstration,
By his Baker’s dream of Baskets Three,
Of the doctrine of the Trinity,—
Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,
Apparently his hearers relished it
With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if
They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?
But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
These people have really felt, no doubt,
A something, the motion they style the Call of them;
And this is their method of bringing about,
By a mechanism of words and tones,
(So many texts in so many groans)
A sort of reviving and reproducing,
More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)
The mood itself, which strengthens by using;
And how that happens, I understand well.
A tune was born in my head last week,
Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
And when, next week, I take it back again,
My head will sing to the engine’s clack again,
While it only makes my neighbor’s haunches stir,
—Finding no dormant musical sprout
In him, as in me, to be jolted out.
‘T is the taught already that profits by teaching;
He gets no more from the railway’s preaching
Than, from this preacher who does the rail’s officer, I:
Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.
Still, why paint over their door “Mount Zion,”
To which all flesh shall come, saith the pro phecy?

V

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?
After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,
Does the self-same weary thing take place?
The same endeavor to make you believe,
And with much the same effect, no more:
Each method abundantly convincing,
As I say, to those convinced before,
But scarce to be swallowed without wincing
By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,
I have my own church equally:
And in this church my faith sprang first!
(I said, as I reached the rising ground,
And the wind began again, with a burst
Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound
From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,
I entered his church-door, nature leading me)
—In youth I looked to these very skies,
And probing their immensities,
I found God there, his visible power;
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
Of the power, an equal evidence
That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
You know what I mean: God’s all man’s naught:
But also, God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
As it were a handbreadth off, to give
Room for the newly-made to live,
And look at him from a place apart,
And use his gifts of brain and heart,
Given, indeed, but to keep forever.
Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
Man’s very elements from man,
Saying, “But all is God’s”—whose plan
Was to create man and then leave him
Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,
But able to glorify him too,
As a mere machine could never do,
That prayed or praised, all unaware
Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
Made perfect as a thing of course.
Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
Of love and power as a pin-point rock:
And, looking to God who ordained divorce
Of the rock from his boundless continent,
Sees, in his power made evident,
Only excess by a million-fold
O’er the power God gave man in the mould.
For, note: man’s hand, first formed to carry
A few pounds’ weight, when taught to marry
Its strength with an engine’s, lifts a mountain,
—Advancing in power by one degree;
And why count steps through eternity?
But love is the ever-springing fountain:
Man may enlarge or narrow his bed
For the water’s play, but the water-head—
How can he multiply or reduce it?
As easy create it, as cause it to cease;
He may profit by it, or abuse it,
But ‘t is not a thing to bear increase
As power does: be love less or more
In the heart of man, he keeps it shut
Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but
Love’s sum remains what it was before.
So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
As seen through power, ever above
All modes which make it manifest,
My soul brought all to a single test—
That he, the Eternal First and Last,
Who, in his power, had so surpassed
All man conceives of what is might,—
Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
—Would prove as infinitely good;
Would never, (my soul understood,)
With power to work all love desires,
Bestow e’en less than man requires;
That he who endlessly was teaching,
Above my spirit’s utmost reaching,
What love can do in the leaf or stone,
(So that to master this alone,
This done in the stone or leaf for me,
I must go on learning endlessly)
Would never need that I, in turn,
Should point him out defect unheeded,
And show that God had yet to learn
What the meanest human creature needed,
—Not life, to wit, for a few short years,
Tracking his way through doubts and fears,
While the stupid earth on which I stay
Suffers no change, but passive adds
Its myriad years to myriads,
Though I, he gave it to, decay,
Seeing death come and choose about me,
And my dearest ones depart without me.
No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it.
And I shall behold thee, face to face,
O God, and in thy light retrace
How in all I loved here, still wast thou!
Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
I shall find as able to satiate
The love, thy gift, as my spirit’s wonder
Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,
With this sky of thine, that I now walk under
And glory in thee for, as I gaze
Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways
Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine—
Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI

For lo, what think you? suddenly
The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
Received at once the full fruition
Of the moon’s consummate apparition.
The black cloud-barricade was riven,
Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
North and South and East lay ready
For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
Sprang across them and stood steady.
‘T was a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
As the mother-moon’s self, full in face.
It rose, distinctly at the base
With its seven proper colors chorded,
Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
Until at last they coalesced,
And supreme the spectral creature lorded
In a triumph of whitest white,—
Above which intervened the night.
But above night too, like only the next,
The second of a wondrous sequence,
Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed
Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
Fainter, flushier and flightier,—
Rapture dying along its verge.
Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
On to the keystone of that are?

VII

This sight was shown me, there and then,—
Me, one out of a world of men,
Singled forth, as the chance might hap
To another if, in a thu
RKM Nov 2011
When his eyes first fell upon her
She was choosing avocados
In the fruit and vegetable aisle.
And he watched how her thumbs lingered
On the base of the alligator pear
And pressed, maternally.
He feigned interest in the cabbages
Whilst sensing her delicate architecture
Through his peripheral gaze.
He thought that somewhere,
In real or imaginary life,
They would soon bathe together.
And when they did,
They soaked for years in secrets,
Details suffusing through their lips and arms,
Water-hole satisfaction and moonlit deserts
To make them feel they might have transcended cabbages
And be pervading a rhapsodic realm
They forgot their friends watching in greenery,
Subsumed by each-other,
They felt no need
To live in a world of relativity and apples.
Their love-traced sphere tightened around them,
Until it ****** at the edges of their skin
And wailed when they parted.
Tighter it grew, elastic dug into their humid thighs
Contorting their once harmonic bodies
That used to fit like crosswords.
And they each became ugly to the other
As the seconds ingested their perfection
And they bickered like flailing urchins
In a deep sea soiled darkness.
Decisions were made and paroxysms detonated
And they were taken back by their
Fungal friends with tissue offerings
And ethanol.
Time passed, and memories were binned
Periodically on tuesdays
Until neither knew the other
And they would pass in the supermarket
With no more than a quickened gait
And a silent thud in each ribcage.

But neither could buy avocados.
harlon rivers Feb 2018
The hollow wind funneled the voice
of the distant night-train crossings,
awakening  a  familiar  silence
hanging from the vast wilderness sky
A restless heart hearkening the echoes,
imagining  a  runaway  Pullman
flew away off the rails,    airborne
on the winged wind headed north

Winter  pausing  for a moment
in  the  shadows  of  familiarity,
as if parsing the unspoken breathings
in an  echoless  surrendered sigh;
uncertain if tacit words set free
could ever allow a heart broken
        to feel whole again

There  is  no  absolving  voice
that whispers in a solemner tone :
        Death  has  no  mercy  ―  
love remains marooned in the wake ,..
and it feels like the world’s gone mad
letting time be the arbiter of perpetuity

The fading dream of a motherless child;
a wish to be held maternally
fell to the ground with a thud,
        breaking the silence,
dissipating formless as the shape of water

Muted cold lips so full of questions
morphing into fugitive sighs
come the unsettled night;
when shadows disappear like frail memories
that  passed  too  soon  to  grasp,
thickly palpable as the warm breath
a winter bird alone on frosty branch

There’s no fear in braving the darkness
in the  winter wilderness of life borne alone
There’s no way of knowing what you’ll find
down that long empty road back home
Life just flashes by silently before your eyes
        through the windshield
    of countless miles and miles

And there’s nothing you can do about it ―
It’s like hearing the moment of truth in a lie
when all I was looking for
was  how I got here in this now,.. yesterday

only finding a hopeless poet
scribbling  slightly stained pages,
spilling  a  bitter  sweet  dream ...


        harlon rivers ... February 2018


///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1st night back home:  the end of a 2400 mile road-trip

I know I can't catch up here, all anyone can do is start again..

I've heard it said: "starting with the ending is the best place to begin."

Thanks for reading !!!
agdp Jan 2010
These Nights with lights, Lightened from cigarette filled clouds to rainstorms.
We are drowning our Inhibition to exhibitions, of a shallow madness.

Within a matter of clearance
Of transverse sunrays:
We call this morning
A day past,
A night ruled with dreams.
Flooded with traffic afflicted
Souls searching beneath empty vessels of libations
Only to unearth realizations from lost sensations.

Vagabonds patrolling streets
apparently policing their worries,
from failed inquiries of maternally adopted creeds.

Divided vision escalated arrhythmic palpitation
Deviation from a gradual calm away from calamity
Expel, Exhort-Excise, the deep-veil

A rising dawn, polluted skies reflected in these eyes,
I stare at this street lamp, flickering at-us-all.
11/20/08 ©AGDP
Facia Overkill Sep 2018
asleep on the walnut sofa bed, my body sprawled over yours, clinging maternally. with your mouth slightly open and your eyelids cracked, your skin tight and your hair- still short, intwined with my fingers, you pull me towards you, still half asleep. your lips touch my forehead gently, my hand now resting on your neck and my thumb on your jaw, doused in the feeling of safety, as you lightly whisper good morning. of course i say it back and you kiss me so blissfully, and you feel like the relief of finally coming home. me, still in yesterday’s t-shirt of yours, now watches you hand roll us both a cigarette- your red nails going back and forth with the cigarette paper with ease. we go in to the back garden and sit opposite each other on the small glass table by the corner and we share a lighter again. again, i watch you inhale and exhale as we drink our tea as the rain begins to fall lightly. strangely, you finish your cigarette first, and begin clearing the table for me. im still overwhelmed by everything and all of my thoughts are in my tangled mind and the words i speak do not compare to the things i think, you are exceptional and any synonym of that word also, you are rare and you are beautiful and something that can not so simply be but into words. as you get up to go back into the house, leaving me to smoke your cigarette until the filter, you kiss me and tell me you love me. i- frozen at the thought of this and overwhelmed by this, my heart races and my mind panics and my mouth blurts out a empty-headed “What?”. you dismiss it as nothing and apologise for the accident, you didn’t mean it. my heart is singing for you. i am in love with you.
Mercy B Sep 2013
In the wake of my self destruction, when i thought all hope had escaped my reach , a whisper of a voice came calling deep with in the night.

Softly wrapping me up in tender words of encouragment, unbeknownst to me this voice had a goal to vanquish all my self-hatred by gently nudging me to rise up and  fight.

Willing me to stand and face the devilish hauntings that are relentlessly  stalking me ,constanly tring to creep through the past's closed door.

Pushing me to believe in my self and my inner strenght, validating that i can no longer hide from the shadows of uncertainty nor fear what they have in store.

Make no mistake it is painfully obviouse that I have only been treading water barely keeping my head above the surface just waiting for the current t o drag me under.


Stiffin up that upper lip and walk with your held held up high, almost maternally spoke this whisper of a voice, which is  now reigning down like thunder .
I had to work thru a bunch of things this past month. I know that I must stay on a positive path so here is my beginning of that journey.
There were the days, dad,
When I thought of us as different
The nights all alone without a shred of paternal guidance,
Maternally smothered, and fostered grown.
And then I saw how very alike to you I am
How my mind doesn’t function—
How I stay up for nights on end
and stay in bed for weeks.
How I am lonely.
And oh—dad—how you’ve trapped me to your fate.
I wish—oh I wish that I could break free of you.
But then, how can the ocean break free of its waves?
You are a part of me, We are the same.
Working
night and day
acidified muscles
curved fingers
being
in resistance

a state of
complaining
the tongue
swollen
painful red
blistered

too much
antibiotics
killing the scream
for liberation
the big bang of life
is suffocated

existence
on mother's breast
or
being bathed by amniotic fluid
doing the best
to avoid the pain of birth

maternally
no disclosure.

© 2014 Marialenn
Brian McDonagh Jun 2020
Parties, sleepovers,
and making it to the weekend
were and are familial excuses
to pull out foods I drool[ed] over
such as fried chicken in the evening
and donuts in the mornings.

Another special fun-food excuse I recall
was a time my Granny and Pappy (maternally related)
patiently endured a three-hour car ride
to visit my family in West Virginia.

[The mystery of their visits
Is how my dad successfully shrouds himself
the majority of the time his in-laws so lodge.]

Something as simple as a supper
felt like a Cold War:
My dad and Pappy
seated at either end of the table.
The sour taste of the evening
wasn’t the skim milk I almost drank.
with saucy spaghetti,
But how my grandfather offered me
a disproportionate beverage
(I had a harder time rejecting offers, then)
and how my dad softly yet sternly
shook his head to my left
with a frowned mouth and anger-stirred eyebrows.

My dad would have been louder
about saving my stomach the trouble
had I not been fearful of loud voices
other than my own,
Whether with sarcastic laughter included
or loud with revealing words.

Caught in the middle as always,
I listened to my dad,
mentally recalling my last comsumable experiment:
When I swallowed rigatoni pasta
without giving the due mechanical digestion.
My stomach acid was angry with my pathetic transition
from eating pasta and feeling fine
to constant flushing behind closed doors.



My dad and Pappy don’t get along.
Years ago I asked my mom privately
why they only say hi and bye
at family gatherings.
My mom could only shrug,
saying how Pappy and Dad
simply had different views of life
that somehow can’t overlap
in harmony.
I’m not a peacemaker,
but I’d prefer not to be a sitcom family
of disconnection.

Suppose there’s a reason
why most grandparents
and their adult children
don’t constantly interact:
If they can’t homogenize their realities,
they don’t mix.
This poetry prompt I was assigned sought to dig into a family relationship to write about.
Wendy Oct 2019
It was just a normal, boring history class.
My group was just about to present a presentation about the typical topic.
I was ready.
I knew what I had to say and do.
My team depended on me.
This was the 7th grade.
I got up to start my lecture on how wonderful castles where.
Then I felt something splatter on my new blouse.
The blood came pretty fast.
I just had a fever the other day.
And thanks to science, I know that because of the fever my blood clots were not normal.
As I was slowly concluding that my nose was bleeding it was too late. I walked up there and it came out.
Just as I lifted my hand to cover the bleeding it already was splattered everywhere.
I ran to the tissues and bolted out the door.
I ran into the bathroom, my hands shaking.
I looked in the mirror.
Who was that?
Who was I?
The girl that looked back at me as someone that had blood everywhere on her face and looked like she was just about to cry.
I couldn’t cry.
I wouldn’t.
I-I shouldn’t.
I am.
I was supposed to be tough but it came.
It burst out and turned into sobs.
Heaving and hacking at my lungs.
The tissues couldn’t hold all of the bleeding.
It began to seep through and onto my fingers.
I didn’t care.
I didn’t feel.
I would’ve stayed there until someone found my skeleton.
But thankfully, that didn’t happen.
As luck would have it, a teacher was in one of the stalls.
She came out into the main bathroom area and gasped.
She eyed me and shook her head.
She grabbed me by my arm.
My mind was muddled due to the loss of blood.
I stared at her numbly. She spoke, “Now, now dear let me take you to the office. We can get you ice and your mom.”
Her voice was light and maternally.
She cared about me.
We walked, arms linked with my hand over my nose clogged with tissues.
I shivered thinking what my mom would do.
I had missed the biggest presentation of the year.
Hopefully, she would understand.
I entered the office with head held high.
Not making eye contact with anyone.
The main lady at the desk questioned, “Did someone beat you up?”
I didn’t take offense to this because I was bleary-eyed and looked disheveled. The secretary shook her head and said, “No fight. I found her like this.”
The lady smiled in my direction and handed me the phone.
I dialed my mom’s phone number, hands shaking, terrified of what was to come next.
Barton D Smock Nov 2017
had he not been all those years
writing a review
for the last book
in the world
my father
would’ve been
a poet

there are only so many crows
one can see
outside a laundromat
for the drowned, scarless hawks

so maternally nudged
into the travelogue
of my staying

— The End —