13thWR

THE EKG

My body is like a rejection letter
that comes in the mail
with ads in Glamour or Mc Call's.
Feeble steps are vapor trails.
That's why this mountain mattered so.
Brooks and streams would sing to me.
I'd kick up dust and not be pairs
of wooden crutches
wallowing in quickened sand.
Moonlight would become my cane,
its whiteness earned by triumph comets
knifing through an unleashed sky.
My backpack full of Cajun jerky,
anything to spur me on.

"You can't take crippled kids
on challenges like miles
of an untamed road,"
remarks between their lines of eyes.
Wrinkles just like razor blades
shave a beard of puberty
that every human blowing glass
deserves as she is growing up.
Will, at times, a useless cork
in bottles broken by the sky.
Bean paste rain clouds overhead
would make the trek more dangerous.
An unrest home of attitude
was all she had to drive her on.
Motion kissed--a camera lens
that grabs a sacred waterfall.
For bones like this,
the wilderness is wilder.
For hearts like that,
the beat means more.

GREASY BRAIDS

My bridal veil of broken bridges took its toll.
I picked the pockets of our vows -
found black pennies in their slots.
Depression was immersive art
and you had peppercorns for sighs.
Lots of dog hair on our rugs.
Lint I scooped but could not
find a place to keep except
the trash--divorce decrees.
My sinuses were swollen bellies of our lies
wanting a window opened up.
Treble clefs of hope I'd trained
had lost their voices in the dark.

Push and shove of tripping tries
and I was always on the ground.
In therapy, the counselor asked me
to regale him with one
of our pleasant memories:
"Leaving the trap to go to work"
was all I had for that spittoon.
It was a long two years
of rowing on the River Styx
and dreaming of a different boat.
Our marriage was a beetle flipped,
squirming on its rounded back.

After you left, I beat the rug of who I was -
found a doormat full of fleas,
arched my spine like a sunflower stalk,
opened up my umlaut eyes.
Rumor has it--you found God and followed him.
Blessings of a summer's kernel
coveted by massive fog.
I'm glad for wrinkles of an angry spirit
finding steam to press them out.
I myself could not wait
for weather vanes to see a
streak of calming blue
among a sour sonnet's lines
that turned from green to greasy braids.

- Janet Buck