The Athenaeum

Tag: poetry

  • You May

    I will never let you
    keep the accent lamp
    in the kitchen.
    There’s
    pans,
    and pots,
    and spoons,
    and knives.
    Cutting boards are littered with chives.
    The wine we have is Spanish,
    and the cheese we have is French,
    and the rug we have is Turkish,
    and the steaks are made from deer.
    But the accent lamp?
    It’s not going to be here.
  • The Secret Garden

    The Secret Garden

    His sins do you confess them?
    No I keep them.
    To some a peculiar matter
    for wife
    and husband, but
              the summer I was sixteen
    thirty-two years after
    the summer my sister was sixteen
    what to do when daughters
    and fathers
              for he was surely a different man then
    live as equals? Words unbound
    exchanging.
    I know now how it was unfair
    but at the same time–
              he was never my hero,
              always just another man
              slowly sowing another garden
              to make up for his paradise lost.
    I keep my own secret garden,
    and his too.
    It made us closer.
    (It made us the same person.)
    But now I cannot tell apart bruised blooms
                                              mine or my father’s
    so I will keep these, too;
    in the same small box
    as his gold cufflinks, and that chip of gravel
    from another life.

  • A Thunderstorm

    i wish i were more things
    that a person could love,
    but my skin is raw
    and scarred,
    every second that i breathe
    is a second too long,
    and even with the right intentions
    my actions end up wrong.
    What I’m trying to say is
    I find myself appreciating the rain
    but still I hope for the sun,
    and too often i am falling
    before the drop has begun.
    It seems I am never enough,
    and loneliness hugs
    me until i cannot scream
    but i need to be this way,
    it’s how you left me.

  • Irreconcilable Circumstance

    Out of focus save for
    a lock of chestnut hair,
    my father wholly in shadow
    and his hands around my chest.
    My mother watching but even then
    consumed by her own darkness.
    It’s my second birthday, and my father
    is just home from sea, still in
    uniform, his gold bars
    on his shoulders.
    Not one face clear,
    but you can tell
    they tried;
    five years into a failing marriage that in five more
    would fall through.
              But I remember that couch.
              I know that painting, only
              the bottom edge
              visible.
              It’s a homemade cake
              with unlit candles
              but you can tell
              they tried.

  • Cosmopolitan Love

    My darling, with her clothes littered
    on a floor painted orange.
    The windows did not come prepared.
    Cactus on a stool,
    and a stack of our vinyls
    (we bought them in a far away fair).
    The nights are force with a paint of its own;
    the windows steer it in,
    clothes light up in appeasing glee.
    When you get out of bed,
    and look down a familiar walk to the tub.
    It’s a feeling that digs into my chest,
    and into the air that’s in between.
    Shunning out the sheets that were over us,
    stuck in a place I want to be.
    Remember where our vinyls were?
    They’re fuzzing away a black night’s sound
    with a warring fervor.
    Her wine’s surface bows to
    fuzzing sound too.
    I’d rather not have another, darling.
    Her hand won’t write like yours,
    and her dresses won’t sing like yours,
    and the rain won’t stick to her neck
    like yours.
    People find something worth looking for,
    I’m not willing to look that far.
    It’s already read in the sweat,
    and in the walk to the Nest.
    We’ll talk about the stars that were clawed
    into the ceiling with a box nail.
    My darling—she reaches for the glass of water
    on the nightstand.
    Her lips are parched when
    thin winter trees peek in;
    spaces between them peek too.
    Their eyes veer throughout the night though,
    focusing momentarily on cactus.
    Where our vinyls were.

  • Dark(er) Girls and Doors

    My mother’s friend sips on her coffee,
    her eyes don’t leave my face.
    she warns as she looks at me, quietly, without saying a word,
    because at that age you must have heard warnings about smooth talking beasts,
    because things like this are not to be said,
    they are obvious.
    I see your mom’s face in your face.
    You look alike. Same lips.
    And I see your daughter’s faces in your face,
    and your granddaughters’ faces in your face.
    They all look back at me through you,
    and I see myself in you.
    “The summer tan is catching up on your daughter. She should probably stay inside. Such a tomboy! I saw her racing with the boys; she’s pretty fast. She’s getting pretty dark though. Are you sure it’s ladylike? For her to be out there racing and getting so dark? Who is going to marry her?”
    I nestled myself into you.
    The anthem of hopelessly hopeful girls worldwide? Isn’t it?
    Thought I’d make a home out of you, like a bee attracted to a flower,
    like a bird attracted to a tree.
    I couldn’t resist it,
    the smell,
    the colors.
    I thought I was going to make a home out of you,
    but your branches started to close in.
    You perfumed more and more of rotting leaves and flowers.
    Your colors faded, faded and faded with me.
    We rotted together.
    My kinks were less and less inviting
    my color too dark,
    the spices my food was made with too strong? Too smelly?
    My freckles not enough to remind you of the ideal woman?
    Someone lighter perhaps?
    Surely not this dark.
    The beast you were warned about as a child by your mother….
    you don’t realize that the beast won’t simply devour you.
    The reason for why your mother won’t even allow you to talk to the beast,
    is because he speaks.
    Smoothly, warms you up like tea on a cold morning,
    he draws you in & makes himself the cage,
    and you the bird in it.
    It’d be a waste to feed only once,
    why not devour you?
    Piece by piece,
    smile by smile,
    wasted minute by wasted minute,
    memory by memory,
    touch by touch,
    before you’ll know all of you will be devoured.
    Pretty curls, and a snapback to hide a head full of mischief.
    Dark girls.
    Dark(er) girls.
    Dark enough to blend in the night,
    so that they can be forgotten and never spoken of again.
    Night stands.
    Someone you don’t show up with in front of your friends.
    At least not seriously.
    The girls you got to keep an eye out for.
    The girl you just have to settle with as the last choice?
    Is that what your mom’s friend meant?
    Hands work restlessly.
    You ask your mother
    why won’t she praise the good Lord with the rest of us anymore?
    A question repeated too many times to be counted in this world.
    Why is her friend so annoying?
    Why can’t she mind her business? Let her race on her bikes and rollerblades in peace?
    Why did she have to act like she even wanted her over for coffee?
    What’s there to be upset about?
    Why can’t she tell her friend that she doesn’t really care about her daughter being a tomboy or getting darker?
    She never had anything to say about it.
    She tells you to go study, that grown folks don’t always say what’s on their minds.
    Years later you realize that the scrubbing wasn’t idle,
    it was the scrubbing of the bars you were locked in.
    So that you’d never have to scrub your way out.
    So your daughters,
    your daughters’ daughters,
    would never have to rot in a cage that smelled of dead flowers.
    Before you leave to study some more for the next four years far far away she warns you of beasts.
    She tells you to not bother with boys with pretty curls and heads full of mischief that talk like her friend.
    She waves goodbye, finally doing something else besides scrubbing.
    I guess I finally realized that books do take you somewhere.
    “Books and doors are the same thing. You open them and you go through another world.” – Jeanette Winterson

  • Ode to my Bed

    Comfy sheets and blankets galore
    underneath the window sill,
    I cannot await you furthermore
    I just left you and still – I crave for you to hold me,
    to feel your warm embrace,
    I miss the way we used to be,
    your pillows around my face.
    I find it rather hard, it’s tough
    To make it through the day,
    I feel I do not see you enough,
    so sorry I can never stay.
    It’s a shame I have to go to class
    and leave you unattended,
    It is only when I return at last,
    That my heart is finally mended.
    So in a lecture, here I sit,
    with thoughts of you, through
    every passing minute,
    I cannot help but appeal to,
    the promise you offer me,
    falling into the sweetest dreams,
    we can be together finally.

  • Wing Tipped Hammer

    Don’t drop the hammer in the lake
    chilled inexperienced hands seem to think otherwise.
    Just, don’t drop the hammer in the lake honey.
    Shivering maple leaves were strewn upon the dock in autumn,
    and had rustled in protest in the remembrance of summer.
    Hands shook in the frigidity of the imposing winter and
    a girlish simper was the only thing around that was still as green as spring.

    The hammer lives in the lake.
    That was the wing tipped hammer that built houses.
    He used to hold the dimpled navy rubber handle,
    to handle anything.

    Turn this baby around, and then they will be scared of ya
    he showed me. Two stainless steel arches pierce.
    Bring it to the new house, you will need it,
    try keeping it at the front door
    and no one will bother you. Winking, half genuine, half unserious.

    They will be sleeping with the fishes
    right next to the hammer
    living in the lake.

    A familiar notch at the base,
    something inflicted by him on every hammer he ever had.
    So you know it’s yours
    he explained.
    Grabbing the exacto knife,
    he knows exactly where to put the knick.
    Right at the base
    of the one that you took with you
    to the new rental.

    Pointed on one end, blunt on the other
    two relentless sides.
    Lots of gravity, and tough as nails.

    Gentle and exact
    brute and firm.

    Make, and break.

  • Daggers at Xagħra Circle

    3,500 BC

    no metals native to this ground but people
    who built their lives in stone know
    stars and sea, know the scope
    of the world from here

    2,500 BC

    Tarxien
    Cemetery comes
    strangely to life when metal
    comes to Melita ¾ its Neolithic name
    you were buried with your
    glittering daggers four
    thousand years
    ago

    1,500 BC

    no
    layer
    of destruction in
    the archaeological record, no
    deliberate burning of the Tarxien Cemetery
    Culture, but a faultless transition
    to Phoenician settlements
    where knives are
    common
    place

  • Beautiful

    Look in the mirror and put on your face.
    Some waterproof mascara frames each eye
    because you must be prepared just in case
    your day turns from bad to worse and you cry.
    If a tear should fall, you will have to soothe
    yourself by feeling the bumps in your braid.
    Despite the dips and curves, your hair is smooth.
    Use this as fuel–be proud of what you’ve made.
    Take a deep breath, wipe the tears from your shirt.
    If not for you, do this for your lover,
    hide best as you can the fear and the hurt.
    Use your appearance, don’t blow your cover.
    Look, dress and act as a little cutie.
    Isn’t that the true meaning of beauty?

  • No Swimming In The Kitchen

    It’s 4 in the morning
    and my head keeps thinking
    about the puddles on the floor
    from when the rain came in.
    I live in a house
    with blood stains under fresh paint
    and a foundation that creaks
    under the weight of the secrets
    it holds
    and they’re trying to escape.
    My skin is untouched
    that much is true
    but I live in a house
    with abuse
    and I watched while it brought tears
    like tsunamis from my mother’s eyes
    and listened to it as the thunder
    that rumbles
    from my father’s throat,
    loud enough to shake my bones
    and awake me from a sleep.
    It slashed open the concrete
    of this house
    and I have seen the walls bleed
    from open wounds
    then it rotted and rusted every corner
    of the air until my lungs
    could not stand a chance
    against the waves that came
    crashing down the door
    all hearts diving in to swim with spite on the floor.
    They tied their grief
    around my ankle
    and watched me drown.

  • A Halloween Scare

    Trying to be silent
    And not show any fear
    With darkness as a cover
    For things that are too near
    My footsteps echo slowly
    Down this creaky hallway floor
    My only sweaty focus
    The haunched white figure standing in the
    Door.
    The only way around it
    Is to inch past scaley skin
    Behind me people scream
    And I’m sorry God that I have sinned
    But the screaming turns to laughter
    And I break into the light
    We made it through the haunted house
    Never again do I want this freight

  • As The Sun Sets Over The Sea

    As the sun sets over the sea
    And the sky fades to grey
    I fly away
    From turkey and talks
    Of what I am studying,
    Planning, loving, achieving
    I leave with a little less
    Less of a rock in my gut than the last
    A feeling I thought would never pass
    The plane dips and my hopes rise
    The fuzzy feelings of home
    Overwhelming my insides
    Back to salt air
    And fewer faceless stares
    From the town I used to call home
    Maybe it’s not the main street
    I call mine
    But the one that makes my heart feel
    Full at the time
    The lights twinkle like stars out my window
    And on this plane alone
    I am home

  • Untitled

    it is tiny and insignificant and it can fill you with fuel and send you up in flames. it is
    ignorant, arrogant, and insolent and most unfortunately – indifferent. you are a tower with
    sound supports, weathered granite casing, weak inner walls, and locked doors.
    it can be found in the lines on your skin and the tightening of your throat when you try to eat.
    it is not enough for your heart and too much for your stomach, concaving your chest and
    exploding it at once.
    it is him and you are me.

  • Choices

    Get ready get set it’s time to go
    fighting a battle but only you know
    Constantly watching never stopping
    Desperately wanting A new way out
    No reason to stay they all went away
    no one will pray or hear you shout
    The one that’s inside never dies
    It will take over don’t close your eyes
    Fighting through all the deceit and lies
    Its finally time to cut loose those ties
    Just keep on walking bring your demise
    For all around it is no surprise
    Look around as nobody tries
    to help you out the outer you cries
    Grab the knife start the fire
    maybe get wood for the pyre
    Everything everyday falls upon you
    You try to handle don’t know what to do
    and before your voice breaks through
    You let the rope snap your neck in two
    But here is the thing life did not end
    Tell me why that is my dearest friend.
    Could it be that the world has won?
    Is this a sign your time is not done?
    Look around you what do you see,
    Family and friends in agony,
    Your mother crying on what you would be,
    Your father grieving down on one knee,
    Your brother or sister clinging tightly
    To the bed where you lie formally.
    Why do I bother to tell you these facts
    Look at how much your loved ones react!
    You are young and have a reason to live
    The world might take much more than it gives
    but know that your life is not a pawn
    not just an item sprawled out on the lawn
    Everyone matters
    Everyone should care.
    Think one more time
    and don’t just stare
    At that image in the mirror saying give in.
    Life is a gift and the line is too thin
    Put on a smile lift up that chin
    Don’t let the evil win
    You are as beautiful as the stars of the night,
    but now it’s time,
    You choose what’s right.

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