[x]

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

cosmic background radiationThey say that the big bang was not an actual "bang". It was really just static. Static, like the interference of radio waves. Of course, the universe did not happen instantaneously. The big bang took 760,000 years to happen. 760,000 years of static, and bang, the universe happened.

I get myself together and actually go out. I go to see the New York Philharmonic perform the works of John Cage at Lincoln Center. I walk out during the second movement of 4'33". There's a very small difference between life and death. I walk home, my chin pulled down against my neck. I hum a constant note, providing myself with my own tinnitus.

I focus on this no

Epitaph for an Old Italian WomanWe walk into the apartment building. The building for old people.
It smells like old people.
We silently take the elevator to the second floor; her room is 205. Mom has the key, so she opens the door. The apartment is so empty. No little old ladies with white hair and a waggling crooked finger.
Empty.
There's still newspaper on the floor by the door. Mom and I remove our shoes and put them on the newspaper, lest her ghost throw shoes at us. Or, maybe, hit us with a broom. She never did it to me, but Mom says she used to.
The pantry is full of food; mostly Fig Newtons. We always brought her Italian cookies when we came to visit, but she'd make us eat them while we were there. We would insist they were for her, but what good were cookies without someone to share them with? Italian cookies, Fig Newtons, and tea.
The cookie jar on the counter is full of tea bags. You could never have Italian cookies and Fig Newtons without

The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.

They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio

I Of YouI want you to break
and never bend for me,

see my history
spiderweb your brilliance
till you belong to me
(and I, to you)
utterly and forever

and know
you cannot stop this.

MonologueSpinal fluid seems to be seeping between the cracks
Of the dark hardwood floors beneath me
As if all the cartilage from my being
Has been used to paste together an arthropod heart
I’ve white washed my pupils and folded them
Into hazy envelopes and sent them off to strangers

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

the trouble isi'd like life to be
quiet and lovely
like distant church-bells
chiming through snow,
muted by the smell of
an old book and the
feel of a fire warming
me into my chair, and
a mug of tea, steeping
the moment in hushed
gratitude, easily in reach.

Liquid Cityhere, at the bottom - lovers.
there are lovers disassembling
themselveslost in and to the
desperate motion in
of - waves.

- did you think the continents
moved themselves? see them slip,

in an open sleep. less go, come.
come and, and - again. trembling

here, at the bottom - their eyes
are lightless. hollow bodies left
restless,

the sea does not sleep.

Like petals and leavesWhen she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky.

And she thinks of him.

She thinks of him digging his toes
into soft, damp sand,
wading in shallow depths before
being carried by crescents of the sea.

She thinks of him in a blur of curls, in the
warmth on her waist and the coolness on her lips,

pressing the memories and the maybes
like petals and leaves
to paper.

And she thinks of him.

starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars

relearning i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the

crystallophonethere is a punchcard sin
like a queen of spades smoldering in an alley.

Engine,
you hear how the gears churn,
singing faster than we did before
back when black magic dropped like a
pair of socks from the sky with supplies
taped to a note that said
(oh, look at you now)
'U.S.A.,
freedom.'

such a beautiful brain:
what
what girl
runs on gasoline?

have a gallon
or we can call it a balloon,
and a new pair of glasses
for your tapered eyes
(you peel the bark back on the logs,
darling,
but you're not sure what you see),
and life says,
either nail jello to a tree,
successfully,

or keep your
icicles hanging from the eaves,
ca

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More from ~TheGlassIris

House with a Sound-Proof RoomShut the door
Close the blinds
Everybody out

Then I will begin.

The house is sealed with a white plaster
They will not know of what transpires here
My neighbors, too deaf to listen
To the sounds that pour from my window

It is a piano, sea-green, ice-blue
Such beautiful, sonic melodies
That pour from its open mouth
I drop

My hands, they push the keys and
Like valves to a high-pressure submarine
All song and sense pours out
The flood of seaweed and sheet music

All at once my family albums are floating
In a vast aquarium of loose jellyfish dishes
Candleholders drifting flames like eerie coral
A whole refrigerator moaning its e

Chatspeak"Love is, like, so real."

"I know, totally."

I
Am five and a half feet
Of pure O
M
Gee's

And your mirror
Is giving me the stink eye,
Because it can't ever be
As introspective as I,
I mean me,
Bitch.

The love I have for myself,
Exceeds all other, like, stuff.
Because I am a Chelsea girl.
My name is Chelsea, my mother's name
Is Chelsea, and all my other
Eleven sisters are named Chelsea,
But only I am a Chelsea girl.

Because I don't just strut the streets
In fashionable heels,
I walk in them too.
Because like, I don't just date boys, kiss
And tell. I love them,
As people.

There is no way, NO WAY,
N-O,

Paper CraneHer hand touched lightly on the paper. Somehow, by a miraculous twist, it became a crane. Two seconds. She picked it up between two thick fingers, work-thundered and smiling in a thousand wrinkles. Just two little seconds. Seconds so little they must have been holding hands the entire time she folded the paper. I was dumb with love.

The Nest of ThornsNo one likes the opinions. They are not loved.
I dropped mine down a well, because
I was too embarrassed, holding it.
I have waited all day to be here,
In front of you. But seeing your face,
I am not bold enough to answer.

Will you cringe, will you scowl?
Will you laugh at my face?
Will you grimace, will you glower?
Will you listen to what I say?

Too late, too late.
Attention flies from your face,
The favorite hatchling
To a protective mother.

Smother. I am abandoned like a cracked egg.

House for the Bird-CagerI am tired

As pipelines, groaning
In the dark, my eyes are plucked, shut, and set down
Beside my bed like a pair of glasses.

It is not a dream, the blank holes
Of my empty eye sockets stare round
At the moon, the plastic crescent

To a mobile heaven.
It is dark here, in the room of my heart
Only room for one tenant, me

And the morning, restart.

Before all else, I will awaken
To the sounds of you leaving home.
On your ten-mile journey to work,

To the grocery store, bank and all
Other places where you must be,
Will you think of me? Time,

Time, the ugly mistress, pokes her head
At the root of my bed. I toss bare fruit at

The Sun GodWhat a delight. To see your form
Die in ember and golden ash.

Your halo, I will hand to the crowds that flee
Childlike from your devastating whimpers.

Stop crying, open your eyes,
Look at me.

The house is no sky. You are no creator,
The crowd, the crowd, the masses

Huddled under a telescope like some chaotic nebula, how
Are they any better from you or I?

Will you light a lamp? Strike a match? No, no.
What good will that do against the night of your own ineptitude?

How gross. I will not stop waiting for you, sun god.
I will not stop waiting, sitting on this gold-plated

Merry-go-round, as it whirls the day away
The lights are

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Candy at a Funeral

by ~TheGlassIris, Dec 8, 2012, 3:09:57 AM
Literature / Poetry / Narrative / Free Verse

In the face of bitterness
I have mastered sweetness.
By the end of this day I will have calculated
exact measurements of cream
to wipe clean the face of gravestones.

I will have learned to soothe the aching
of windswept hearts,
to break open on my part
like a shell of chocolate
quivering open, full of cream.
I will have learned to love grief
as dearly as my own dream.

At the end of my childhood -my dream-
of owning a candy store:
a sweet shop, a bakery….
specializing in the art of the glazed.
The wedding cakes, the brick tarts,
memory of a birthday, of candles, happy catering
for happy occasions of all kinds…
-my dream-
will grow up with time,
and like the end of the day, seeing the look on my parents' face,
feeling the clutch of my big brother's hand
I will know:
-the childlike shame-
to have a better chance at happiness.

My dream will transform
-through grief,
it will change
under the rain, under
wind walking through cypress
trees, it will
become something new.

Cleaner, realistic-er, the kind of thing
Mom secretly celebrates in a dream
as she sleeps the day away, plagued
by financial worries.
The candy Gran gave me (this grave of me)
melting its sweetness into my hands.

My hands will smell like lemons and syrup
all through my natural life.
Everything I touch will sweeten, sticky
itself in the light.

Grief transforms (into fruited blooms, heavy
dew, linen sheets, the clothes
blowing fresh in the wind. White as sugar, crust
with sunlight). Sweetness, such sweetness,
will enter me like a prayer.
I'll turn to candy in the light, my hands
become that of a sugary, raw
entity.

I will open the doors of my shop.
I will invite the lovely children in,
the lonely wives and widowed fathers,
as well. I'll tell
the grandparents not to hang back, come in,
have a snack, sit on down, take a plate
would you like cream or chocolate cake?

Because—
in the face of such silence,
I have my baking oven.

I have my taffy-maker, my bubbling pans
of dulce de leche. I have a family wrought
of a sickening-silence, a brother
made of stone, a mother

—like candy glass.

I'll have speeches, some sermons,
I'll have my hearty attempts to cheer them up,
I'll have frustrations

ending like songs at the end of a record,
breaking me down like sugars in stomach acid,
turning to glass and candy crystal.

I'll have delicate,
I'll have fragile,
I'll have an unbroken
love in my hands,
I'll have love,
I'll be love.

Grief has created something.
In me, a world,
at once real and illusionary,
standing in the face of bitterness
-and having mastered sweetness-
it breaks open like a candy shell
revealing the hardened core of love:

a single sun/son of hard candy.

Candy at a Funeralby ~TheGlassIris

Literature / Poetry / Narrative / Free Verse

From my poetry writing class. The exercise was to work on a piece with repetition. I tried to vary the types of repetition I used. I guess it turned out successfully. Someone commented, "Candy-maker or Undertaker" on this piece. That sounds like a good name for a poem.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-30

Candy at a Funeral by ~TheGlassIris is a poem that intertwines grief and candy in a way that feel natural and beautiful. ( Suggested by *0hgravity and Featured by `thorns )

love 3 3

joy 2 2

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

=Boogieman900 Mar 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I quite enjoyed this piece, the use of repetition didn't interfere with the flow of the poem, and it didn't feel like it was forced into position. Very well written.

~TheGlassIris Mar 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you.

=Sammur-amat Jan 13, 2013 General Artist

There is so much awesomeness in this piece.

I will have learned to soothe the aching
of windswept hearts,
to break open on my part
like a shell of chocolate
quivering open, full of cream.
I will have learned to love grief
as dearly as my own dream.

^This.