Asymmetries

(https://www.pinterest.com/pin/62276407317468080/)

I.

Her mouth is wildflowers

but her tongue is too tame for its own good.

 

II.

She was raised up in a climate too hot to keep

the skin from melting at the edges of her eyes

and then the world was only horizontal,

so that she never saw the days rise and fall

but shift hazily from right to left, left to right,

like the pages of a magazine.

Rosemary

(http://imgfave.com/search/surreal%20picture%20woman%20beautiful%20art)

what if she disappeared
quick and clean as a rainstorm

would you still love her when
she is little more than earth?

perfume stale on a necktie
rosemary and basil fat in the kitchen

these things aren’t tangible
like her hands on your mouth

wheeling through the seasons
with the windows rolled up
isn’t really living, she told you

four arms, four legs
two hearts, one home
these are the roots of us

waste the days on fleeting laughter
on the way she looks at the end of the night

put on your best suit and
go puddle jumping

it won’t matter like
the way she smiles in the rain

if she wants snow in July
disembowel the Egyptian cotton pillowcases

tear down the silk curtains and
she’s queen for a day

bask in the way she ties a
perfect knot around the
neck you kiss when you’re sorry

the way she glides across the
living room and calls on the help

because when she’s gone
when she’s really, truly a memory

you won’t ache for things,
for money well spent, for her rosemary

instead you’ll keep her best in the
all of the jeweled spontaneity

in the way her body felt
so light in its blissful carelessness

museum of me

(http://rebloggy.com/post/surrealism-anatomy-surreal-art-fernando-vicente/88480807114)

you caught me in our closet

again, plucking strands of hair

in the almost dark.

 

I said I was weaving curtains

to keep your mother out,

so you turned on the overhead

bulb and went back to bed.

 

at breakfast you said weren’t hungry

while I hovered around your knees,

sopping up the milk that bled like

canvas paint through the bowl I’d

made from the bits of me I’d been saving.

 

I baptized your spoon and examined

what I’d been leaving behind; five

of my molars formed the handle.

I tossed it in with the other cutlery

and when you left for work you kissed

me goodbye and my jaw fell off.

 

I think you were absentminded when

you put it in your briefcase with your

ballpoint pens and paperwork, and I

was left at home to cover all the mirrors.

 

I think I hid beneath the bed until

I heard our screen door open and slap shut.

 

when I emerged all limbs you’d popped

open your case on our bedroom floor,

making a museum of me.

 

and while I reached for every piece

with newspaper hands you sunk

into a nearby chair, clicked on the

lamp and read me every hidden archive.

** I would like to thank WordPress for choosing my poem, a poet to her son, to be Freshly Pressed last week, and to all those who liked, commented, or chose to follow my blog based on that piece: your feedback has been overwhelming. Thank you so, so much. I look forward to making even more writing connections!

The Visitor

http://pulpfactor.com/art/1797/death-and-surrealism/

The girl walked into death like she’d walked into a coffee shop: right into that thick inviting aroma that rocks one to sleep whether you choose to drink it in or not. There was only one door, easier than she’d expected, no riddles, no guards. She still had on the same clothes she’d left in. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either, like sun sneaking in through cuts in cool stone. She spread her arms and closed her eyes and ran fingertips along the unevenness of the walls like braille, trying hard to decipher a dream. Her life had been a single oval room, no corners to hide from the burning passage of time. She’d prayed for this all along, this lengthening hallway of the afterlife, this final relieving sigh.

Minutes passed – Heaven’s hour – and the hallway seemed to sway and stretch, reaching away from her as she navigated its barrenness. The walls weren’t changing; she felt no inviting breeze from a nearby ending. Death did nothing to stop her panic, the final ropes of life. She thought she’d be just a cavity now. Nothingness. The undulating residue of stardust. Something inside her was stirring. “Not now,” it whispered from her throat.

She woke in the same old chair at their same old dining room table. The pieces of paper she’d scribbled on and balled up and thrown onto the floor were now smoothed and neatly stacked in front of her, every single one blank, unused. Her cheeks were dry and when the movement came back to her fingers she found they were no longer wrapped around her husband’s pistol. Just then a breeze walked in from an open window. When she looked up her son sat just across from her, cross-legged with tiny elbows on tiny knees. Outside a car pulled into the driveway.