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Melinda Blount
for the comfort of goldfish
We took a walk along the edge
of everything; watched hours crawl
until we were of the age
to understand time is the most important
of all things wasted. Passed shadows
through morning sun-bursts,
haze of a summer lake in mid-
heat and talked about why we create poetry,
now; how we write so that those
who come after will stop—
dip a finger into the lake
and scratch the backs of goldfish.
The Last Prophet
There was a man, some time between Cain
and the day water reclaimed the Earth,
when the world swallowed sky in large gulps
and regurgitated stars into fish
to cluster at the bottom of the sea.
Hair broke in tatters down his back.
Eyes, the vacant stare of gods
settling down to a game of dice
and hands only large enough
to hold Gaea as she lay dying.
His lips could only touch in screams
and spit up pain into leaves turned
upside down in weeping, cocoon'd
in the slivers of branch that waved
like passing armies between his knees.
Laid his head between roots of the cypress tree
and from the hard knurl of his belly sprung
the last butterfly to sail over earth and water
before the sun launched its breath
and extinguished the all of the universe.
Mandy, the salts shall revive you.
Mandy understands the taste of tears;
'salt of the earth' she says.
A mother's gift
'and when pain becomes a burden—dig your fingers deep
within her body,
bury them. Beneath red clay, stones, those mountains that
grow
continuously until you are shadow'd into a child, again;
mound them over with sticks. Forget'.
Mandy climbed the ocean
when she was three.
Fat-chubbed fingers reaching
for a mother that drowned
years before
her body floated up
from the depths of drugs, alcohol.
Mandy learned lessons standing
on the ledge- how the sea
can hold a body buoyant
even as it is drowning. How a mother's
love isn't always a guarantee
but there is an acceptance of sorts, from the rich of the
earth.
How one can still grow into a woman without a woman's hand to guide.
Even as breasts bud, she taught herself of a bond
with all that climbs up as ghosts in the night air. Visits,
but what haunts her remains within.
Mandy has fallen in love. She thinks.
He is not soft, tender. Doesn't
know the lullabies that she urges for.
'He'll do' she cries
though, sometimes—when Mandy sleeps
her hands spread apart the soil
dig up the bones she buried,
holds them to her as the child she never was;
she is the waves of that ocean, then.
Mandy knows the taste of her own tears.
—first published in Silenced Press
Sleeping with Gods
If Saturday was caught in a tangle
would you sit beside me,
Indian style, and unravel every hour—
hands and arms nicked
from bramble bush thorns while our legs
buzzed asleep; would you chase
butterflies through Elysian Fields,
cat nap beneath a willow tree
while Sunday rolled around
to wake us into church dresses
would you hum the hymns loud enough,
carry us both to heaven
when I lose my way, standing forlorn
before the echo of empty
would you come back to save me?
| Melinda Blount is a writer and mother
living a quiet life in small town, Ohio. She is an avid
collector of anything, amassing a wealth of useless things
that sit in the corners of her apartment. Her poems have
appeared in print and electronic journals such as: Willow
Review, HazMat Literary Review, Thick with Conviction,
Byline Magazine and the anthologies Feeling
is First and Nothing But Red. |
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