Poetry By
Emily R Frankenberg
Published on: 2/26/2015
The Widow and the Flowers
We wanted you to have these, they told me after burying you, and handing me diverse bouquets of flowers, and I think about the trade of you for flowers, what they'll do other than throw up dirt and smile at me for drinks. Will the nasturtiums fill your armchair with new life? Will the chrysanthemums turn toward me as I talk? Will the narcissus shave his stigma in your mirror? And will the sunflower surround me with his girth? "No, you are useless," I pronounce to their sweet faces in a row that keep on smiling indifferent and bright. But when the sun sets, I arrange them on the shelf above our bed over your absence and my slumber, keeping watch. And in my dreams, some revelation flames in petal-thin array, some life springs up from us in flowers, after mourning and decay. You skip the grave for resurrection, I skip life in your pursuit. Our lifeless bones subside, then rise up in a flower.
Published on: 2/21/2015
Your Adolescence Rising
Your adolescence rises like a vapor from the ground with awkward stops at nursery windows and at tombs. Your conflagration blazes like a banner in the night against the folding gray of tables and of hearts. You hold your mollusk soul supreme above its ever-changing shell. You bleed out pearls against our sandy contradictions. I only wish that I could help you through these seas and through these tides. I only wish I could illuminate your rising in the night. But I cannot, for I am part, although reluctant, of that night of that conformity in which we adults sleep, perfect and dreamless, only broken by occasional regrets and only startled by the coming of your day.
Published on: 2/17/2015
Second-Hand
You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new. I say some impulse makes me deck myself in quaintly vintage stains; it is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you. There is no newness to be found in these ghost-haunted, ancient rooms, if not the newness of two souls mixing their pains. You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new. I cite the hope that makes the fleeting bird repeat his age-old tune, warbling anew the hoarse millennial refrain. It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you. It is the impulse of the sun always returning to our ruins and of the madman who can still recall his name. You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new. I cite the crowning of man's shameful night in tiny pearls of dew that pour their water on our parched, polluted plains. It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you. It is the placing of our tattered hearts like spring's first blood-red bloom up in the windowsill to greet the coming day. You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you.
|