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