@Jay Dougherty, here are the poems I'd like you to consider:
***
(to be published in Hallowzine 3rd issue)
Ultra
You look for a home
or something
much worse.
Your violet eyes
are violent,
ultraviolet.
You tiptoe through
the dust of abundance,
hoping to slip
between the lines
of this poem.
Your mind
is a snowflake,
melting in the sun.
***
(wanting a homeless person to return home, published in Medusa's Kitchen)
The air leaves the room
to follow you home,
to lift up the heels
of your shoes.
When you don't come back,
the chair cushions sink,
the clock turns its face to the wall.
The paint on the walls
turns to trails of tears,
puddles in blue on the floor.
Even in breeze,
lace curtains hang limp,
missing the touch of your hands.
The lock on the door
declines to stay closed,
hoping that you will return.
***
(published in Medusa's Kitchen)
Too Many Miles
I’m too many miles
away from yesterday,
idling at a truck stop
that stopped,
weeds spreading
in cracks faster
than rumors.
I unfold an old map,
squint at squiggles
falling into emptiness
without a plan
or sense of direction.
I don’t want to stop,
I don’t need to go anywhere
but back to who I was,
on this road
that seems to go
nowhere.
Isn’t getting home
always the hardest part?
***
(published in Medusa's Kitchen)
Elsewhere
My dream of being elsewhere
leads to curious journeys,
past sandcastles melting into brine,
down abandoned staircases
of cobwebs and candlewax.
Could I crawl into the skin
of someone else
and find contentment there,
perhaps become a child of night,
a traveler on the edge of time?
No matter where I find myself,
my bags are always packed
in hopes of opening a door
I’ve never seen to find
the prize that I’ve been looking for,
a place I can call home.
***
(Poems are homeless, too! Published in Medusa's Kitchen)
Rejection Blues
… not the best home for your work at the moment.
At the moment,
my poetry is homeless,
shuffling down dim lamp-lit streets,
sprawled out in a soggy alley
drinking vodka from a broken bottle
behind a run-down bar.
We wish you the best of luck with placing it.
Down on its luck,
my poetry hitches a ride
in a boxcar of a train
headed for nowhere in particular,
for a place with no name.
Living on the edges, wandering,
It sings the rejection blues.
***
(published on OAF)
Missing
for my grandparents
Their smiles
are bleached
from the photo
baked brown.
They escaped
from the homelands
that wanted
them gone,
erased, dead,
forgotten.
A soundless escape,
taking only
the disruption
that clung
to their skin.
Their absence
displaced the air,
replaced it with
ocean wind.
***
(published in Medusa's Kitchen)
Hobo Heart
My hobo heart
drags a knapsack
full of moonlight
neatly folded
into a blanket
of leaves.
My hobo heart
hitches a ride
on midnight
train whistles,
cross-country buses,
and truck stop coffee.
My hobo heart
has pockets full
of rainbows.
A ticket to anywhere,
anywhere but here,
is stuffed inside her shoe.
