Wednesday, June 20, 2012





How We Turn Out
for Melissa Crowe  

                  

                          1

You, October, crest with ache into the month
of Scorpio, a small scattering of Saggitari.
Your brittle signs drop at the everrunning feet
            of my two living children.

In this weather, orange pekoe burns the tongue---spiky
and livid. I can barely lift my head to meet
the bruised tatter of sundown.
            Everything reminds me of sometimes-Sunday’s fist:  nose burst

blood flooded my mouth hot, hot my smeared chin red. Outside
a garden of dead orchids. Run. The taste was citrus: the huge work-fist
of my father and his shining eyes, his sick scream stalking.
            A continuation of fevers, vacuums, thick books, places to hide.

                 
                         2
 A new mother stalks robed and flabby
through her orderless kitchen
and steams things. Copper pots and bad
Investments      haunt her lately.

Soon a lady will come to the door.
She will look like an aristocratic runaway
with her stiff luggage and blank tropical eyes.
But she has cream for dimpled thighs,     and a case of lipsticks.

She     says red.    Run.    “Autumn Red is your best color”    
Her fatpowder pink face crowds the door.
In some other world the lady nods compassion---Sweetie, you look like you 
could use a friend. Instead she bends toward the reds, painful rows of them.




Alicia Fisher, all rights reserved 2012

1 comment:

Melissa Crowe said...

Gorgeous. Feels like Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich had a baby and it was your poem.