I am tired of words dressed up in suits.
I am tired of being symboled into stick figure and empty coffin.
As if a person needed something to represent.
Sometimes a heartbeat, is just a heartbeat.
Let my hands be just my hands.
http://redwolfpoems.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/we-wordle-25/
(I know, I used only one of the wordle words. Oh well.)
I fish stars
from the black holes in between my teeth,
build a seaglass castle
from pieces still sharp.
I will be the one
who sculpts my own hands,
break pinata of a mask
and gorge myself sick.
http://redwolfpoems.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/prompt-219-the-world-awakens/
A crystalline lullaby, God in a bucket,
played on the stars piano,
archs through the blackened trees.
Fish write the second and third verses,
in dog’s-tail cursive under the pearl surface.
A boat is shining.
A single leaf of paper is singing from the sky.
The fishes, in bewilderment,
lose sight of all their secrets.
They scatter from the broken doors of their mouths
like wild horses.
Three different girls put their ears to the water,
wake up with their heads full of mud.
Waterlillies are not like seashells;
they do not keep safe the vibrations
of this song.
When I was younger, my favorite dream
was to pick a waterlily. They lay across the swaying lake
like bananas sliced on oatmeal, fitting into each other
like locks, teeth. Trash and ghosts of oil
wrapped around their legs like clingy children.
I thought a green circle
would make a perfect pet. Imagined suspending it from the ceiling,
as if my bedroom was a lake, watching it float
like a UFO. I stared into the greengreengreen
like a crystal ball
and wondered what it would taste like.
http://redwolfpoems.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/prompt-215-talk-back-to-a-poem/
This is a response to At The Mouth of Birdsong by Barbara Young. https://redwolfjournal.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/barbara-young/
This planet was shaped
out of memories and clay
by a grandmother’s hands.
The glinting moon
was carved in the sky
by the hands of cherry trees.
We have every shape.
We have no borders.
We are eternal
as the moon.
My Grandmother sings
the Hanukkah prayers.
Her voice is petrified wood
and waterfall, a tenth flame.
Barukh atah Adonai. The song is a slinky
of shadowed rooms and singing,
words glinting off the ceiling
like light off mother-of-pearl.
As we sit down,
she takes my hand.
Note: I have three grandmothers. My Jewish grandmother is probably my favorite person in the world.
http://redwolfpoems.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/prompt-214-celebration-and-ritual/
The minnows prick
at our toes like soda bubbles.
Our inside out twins
unfold like parachutes around us
across the sparkling surface
of the coiling water, ripples singing
like truth. My brother is an otter,
on his back, upside down,
sub-sandwich-thick water gun
tucked in the crook of his arm.
I float on my back, my hair like a painter’s brush
twisting through the water,
melting into a hallucination
in the summer warmth.
The trees are bent like
the sails of the boats that
twist hallucinations into the lake.
The birds curl their feet around the edges of branches,
dip their noses into the water,
sputter a twittery, watery
song. In the crook of the red brick shadows,
trailing like wedding dress trains, the birds
are having a party: playing tic-tac-toe
with mismatched feet, pecking the sugar
from soda cans. In the crock pot tops
of the buildings, the birds
are imitating roast chickens, hoping the sun’s sizzle
will not boil their eggs. On the railings of ships, the birds
hang out their wings to dry. They tightrope-walk
on the edges of bridges. They fly a bullseye
towards the sun.
We pluck resinous peaches
staring like camel eyes from baskets.
I admire each fragile sky, each tight
map of the cloth that sweet-scarves your teeth.
My brother smells the dark hurricane
of apples hopscotched with holes, their scabs swinging
like cat doors. The man behind the tables
knows, and he tells us
the truth: the thin
stains that sit on apple skin
like tea swung from it’s cup
are luckmarks, kisses from hail
that shivers from the sky when we sleep, when ditch dark
has lulled into idleness and the trees
have never seemed more living.
I can see the words
stir dawn on my brother’s face.
He believes in farming
harder than fairies. He will take an apple from the bag to hold,
hoping the luck
sinks into his hand. It will be the only apple
anyone eats after the rest are crushed into foam,
as the car bounces, driving home.
Autistic Abby Writes 