Surfeited
Morning found me
in a round of alarms
each softer than the last
with gray
light through window-
pain, cloud trails white
as jasmine petals
tucked behind
ear and smile. Form
rising; flesh warmed in
cotton given no hope
of imitating
previous nor
replicating
the future.
A letter to a real friend
It is hard to take the truth
delivered at point blank range
like a bullet ripping through
the
3rd
I
even harder to hold back defenses
boiling beneath the surface,
sharp-toothed and hungry.
My disappointment,
dipped
in self-pity on the end of her blunt
t
i
p
p
e
d sword,
lets me know I have spent too long
in the land of the deaf with all that ego
stuffed between my ears, that above all else,
I stopped listening and therefore stopped learning.
Sometimes,
it is hard to take the truth.
Lost Identity (after Paul Blackburn)
We get windfalls of strength
that prove to be more
valuable
than money and fame.
Time spent choosing braided ropes
of morality and conviction,
the core
that holds a personality erect
wears thinner with age,
morphs into a larger
meaning
loved ones rarely understand.
Pride is on the line and vulnerable,
so thin and trepidaciously
walked
and we don’t know how it will recover.
It is only one pebble tossed
For Amelia
The matriarch died in a flooding
of the world; she ruled
hearts and faces into
sunbeams,
molded the consciousness of children
in her disappointment,
fixed tears under shy smiles
with the smell from her blouse
as they buried faces
into it.
A child calls out, “I
can’t breathe” and we know
the psalm of her heart washes over
engorged banks of rivers,
night merging
lost dreams of others,
collecting its own story on the journey.
Release,
and again into the torrents
of blackness,
fireflies light the way
over muddy waters.
Thinking of Sea Trees at Sunset
Small white pills
trick the body out of her fertility--
give her false impressions
of eggs growing life,
cells dividing from the combination
of double helix DNA
swimming in the heat of her core.
Breasts swell forming a mother's cleft,
the weight of them
an implication to nourish;
muscles relax through the hips
anticipating the burden of travel
from one world to another.
And sleep covets her entirely
to protect them both from transformation,
building bones and lashes and teeth;
fingers sprouting like blades of grass;
heart beating as if a hiccup,
no more than a flutter beneath the skin.
Then the last pill, small and blue,
laughs heartily at this joke of creation,
the simplistic human need to populate,
and undergo masterpieces
of flesh and magic.
Life
falls
down
in the gravity of death,
held firm in its change,
and what's left is a river of vermilion
between supple thighs.
Interstate
The sky rains starlings
in maize flecks and iridescent
ebony cascade with wings s p a n n e d and diving
Kama
kazi
from verdant rectangles, hinged on steel arms.
Signs mislead us, driving into
twilighted spring winds
feeling devoured
like fat worms after rains, flesh
and grit pierced with golden barbs, easily.
Aleathia Drehmer is happy. She is the Editor of a print micro-zine called Durable Goods and the Special Editions Editor for Zygote in my Coffee. Her work has been published in fine journals and magazines, both online and in print, such as: Ottawa Arts Review, Word Riot, The Cerebral Catalyst, Flutter, Laura Hird, Silence Press, Nibble, Munyori Poetry Journal, and Hobo Camp Review. She has had two small collections of poetry published at Kendra Steiner Editions called “Thickets of Mayapple” and “Circles”. Her forthcoming full collection called “Empty Spaces” will be in a book shared with Dan Provost published by Tainted Coffee Press. Her previously published work can be viewed HERE.
