Poems

I’ve been reading my old poem files and will publish a few I think should have made it to light.

Hope you enjoy them.

Published Poems:

A Song Changed Her Name

Angel, her name at adoption, purchased to please–

when her mother dies at eight. The clenched rosary

still cries on the docks while Angel buries cinder

blocks, stomps the earth, and beats every tear into dust.

She ran to a silk bed of barrenness. She knew

how to be empty. The stroll through clean air could never

purify her black mourning, Michael sees his wife.

Not in lust, but a need to rescue her, as if it was himself.

At midnight she is beaten to swollen blue

beyond the pale owl skin, in the bed-

matted wheat locks she curls-in to guard the pain.

He steals her to his home. Hour-by-hour, wringing

rags, with faith she will live, in a fiery cabin.

She awakes to find her name become Amanda.

On the barn, wind chimes sing his love song in each storm.

Snow falls, melting her concrete organs as seeds wait

for spring and flowers bloom inside, but with wolf eyes

she plucks out each one. Stares, disgust, and judgmental

brows or a dry mouth of lust–this she knows–

but not a kiss after the slap or a tender

touch after barn grief’d tears. With every push–

he came closer. She flew a white flag inside the dusty

bowl, resolved to learn to stay, than be what the wind

picked up that day. Even if- it would tear out her limbs,

chop her in tiny pieces, like the fish he plant

with the kernel buried deep in the hole by his

rugged hands.

She would not be barren forever.