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THE WOMAN IN ROOM 808
“She didn’t always look this way,”
pulling a comb through her mother’s matted hair.
“Just last week she was fine, she was okay,”
she said while the woman in bed rattled away
about Sammy, her cat, and the snakes on the floor.
“She didn’t always look this way,”
she said again, the light of day
making paste of the face I saw taped to the door.
“Just last week she was fine, she was okay.
See that picture on the door? See the way
She smiles? Daddy put that rose in her hair…
she didn’t always look this way.
Mama, dear, you need help with your tray,
Mama don’t, you’re getting food everywhere.
Just last week she was fine, she was okay,”
she said while the woman in bed played
in her carrots and pears.
“She didn’t always look this way.
Just last week she was fine, she was okay.”
B. Lee Brown
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THE BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE
The heavy Sun,
believing that there
really is safety in numbers,
called on his best friends,
Moon and Wind, begging them
to say goodbye to this, the old life,
and leave the humans to their own devices.
Suddenly there were flocks and flocks
of pigeons sweeping just over the horizon
like a bitter silence that came to burden us.
Ignore the last poem I wrote you, my dear.
I believe your cheating ways brought on
the whole goodbye of this earth.
All our beautiful troubles are because of you.
T. Obatala (trkyounger)
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FIFTY WHITE STONES
when blue sky cracks
blending into somber fog,
a soon-darkness
drops the ground
a little lower
and if I am to be translated
like this winged she creature,
she of bending back and black
wings, if I am ever to be
as permanent, let it be here
in this northern field
where I have stopped
among fifty white stones, long & flat;
being here is less like surrender
fifty years will do this to a person looking
for signs, looking for any reason that having been
can be as lasting
Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)
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