S.P. Flannery
Small Town Trepidations
On some level she wanted a child
to hold against her breast,
to protect her from taking
a chance in life, a risk.
As a young girl,
she dreamt of witnessing
the places learnt in school,
those ancient maps
were drawn into her memory
until they were more familiar
than the grid of her own Midwestern town.
During the equinox of her youth,
when trivial problems become amplified,
she healed her anguish with his elixir,
his pubescent, triumphal moments
in the backseat of his parent's mini-van.
After the difficult birth,
she happily drowned in new found attention,
until the father departed for college
and the wanton banshee-wails
overwhelmed her to exhaustion.
So she lives in a tavern house,
the child with the grandparents,
telling lager-induced stories
about what could have been,
and staring quietly into a neon mirror.
Exoskeleton
I found a red silk shirt,
khaki-colored slacks,
and tanned leather shoes
next to a dumpster,
opaque, slimming,
and put them on,
enwrapping myself in another's scent
that changes my form,
a brand new skin
to present to this world.
I follow the bass beat
into a basement party
of smoke and cheap lager,
but my new aroma permeates
through to her nose,
pierced in the left nostril
with an emerald stone stud
that lights those rocks
where my vessel could crash
and dissolve, but this fear is covered
until I remove this carapace
and she discovers
the insect under the shed spun shell.
The Fall
My brain has become useless,
and instinct shrinks to vestigial;
organs empty of fluid and
unbalanced songs. Suspended
clouds climb soundlessly
as boneless limbs grasp edges
that dissipate; wisps of
visible mirages morphing
continuously into childhood shapes.
I meditate to acceptance,
the puffins, with their harmonious
beaks, stare in agreement
from nests clinging to rock cliffs.
My arms spread wide open
to imitate the concentration
of a gymnast who lands
knowing their score is not decided
by self-criticism; spikes of water
grate the pain from flesh.
Judges, the community, comment
about why a body delivers itself
on this smooth pebble beach.
Men
We are
stones that reflect
chaos swept sand waves into
each other. Silence occurs where
they meet.
On the Window Sill
In the house captive pot of parsley,
a microcosmic niche exists,
with succulents that drink water sparsely,
and a carpet of snow persists.
Rays of the Eastern sun caress the crowns,
as stalks bend and stretch to dive into the stream,
that ripens oranges into various browns,
and strikes a vase that reflects the rising beam.
A caterpillar emerges upon the vertical plane,
bemusing the hunger that dove into the heated wheat,
with it's specks of reds and yellows the size of a grain,
spikes extending like a swollen teat.
The juvenile is replaced on a non-stop apricot,
the hooked feet gripping to resist the pull of gravity,
plummeting to where the first blooms have rot,
and the soil mires in warped depravity.
Copyright © S.P. Flannery
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