About this column:
Poetry Patch runs each Sunday. This column is about poems inspired by your home Patch, Decatur-Avonale Estates. From time to time, we'll have guest poets who have submitted their work to Patch. For consideration, please send your submissions to Patch editor: renee.valdes@patch.com.A man offers me drink,and I am amenable enoughto trade a beer for conversation today.He’s just moved, so he must not knowthat here was an antique store(never open)and a no parking signwe knew to ignore.He asks me out.He can’t imaginethe funerals and therapist officesI’ve been to this year.He doesn't realizethat I only smokewhen I feel overwhelmed.Is he beautifullike a baby grabbingat the new world?Or will he trample me,an unmarked grave?I guess it’s betterthat we can’t see time.Who would call me beautiful?Who would want to be heredrinking among the phantasmconstruction crews and gasoline …
There goes the train clacking down the track. The conductor, a seamstress on the night shift stitching a hem and a dart to tuck those warehouse lofts neatly into Decatur's curves, then beading each lamplight onto her as she slumbers.
“Bonjour, madamemoiselle!” he says every week, and I never correct him. We walk together, the glass panes and pink and white rows of fresh fish - le poisson - stretch out between us as I point delicately to some choice fillets and ask, “Il est frais?” He smiles so earnestly for a man not on commission.Does he ever notice I buy too many pounds of fleshfor an unmarried woman to eat?He tells me in our languageexactly which hour each fish came.Whose wife is above a modest look away baring her young throat, if she still has it, to charm a man out of his freshest catch to feed her children?When he…
Grownups have recess Timeset aside to be to play To sweat victory To double dog dare each other in our outside voicesGrownups get scratched up skinned knees and grass in our hairI stink of recess after loving youI can wash up scrub down Recessgets under my nails in my kneepits behind my earsIt would make my mother furious Loving you is basketball in bedthrump thrump thrump thrump thrump thrumpdriving down the court then Releasea three-point shot I savor the silent hanging gasp in sky before the Tremble of rubber cutting net Loving you is declaring my real name to the neighborhoodYou and I…
Two stand out in my mind.A man, said he was hungry, scoffed at my chicken sandwich.A woman, asked for change, walked to the trash canand peeled my hard-boiled eggs there on the East Lake station platform.I wish I wasn't dieting that day. Today, I actually have change in my pocket,and I put in my headphonesjust like I do during flight safety announcements as someone starts his speech at the front of the car. I know what he's saying, even thoughI'm not looking at him.I can see him walking down the trainreflected in the windowhard as I try to look through the glass.Each step he takes toward me …
the hefty waitress sidearms my greasy entree on the table with the studied resignation of a breeding dog but I am too self conscious of my reflection in the window, cheeks enflamed and eyes glassy so the fluorescent lights and yellow art deco appear as pollock himself drips and drops and sweet tea swirls like the time I swallowed that placebo latchkey kids call love then I burned inside just like this flame-roll-drop-bass- breathe hallucinating the iron valleys and fjords of your fingertips smoldering on my neck and thighs…
There once was a commissioner in Decaturwho made history being black and not straighter.She’d make the potholes completeeven though she’s petite.We accept all heights where it’s greater. - Happy St. Patrick's Day from Poetry Patch!
It’s conquest I taste taking her out to brunch.Legs as long as a day without breadCrossed and cocked out like a motorbike kickstand. She’s the Picasso at Sun in My Belly gracing the banquette. I’m having the Napoleon Complex.A sandwich savory and sweet as a girl you just met last night. Mother Buonaparte made him this fateful foccacia and prosciutto panini with brie his father brought back from the court of Louis XVI.Back then, they only had two children to dote on and not eight. I might have made that up to hear her laughor make her think about having my babies.Truth is hunger - not height…
Your sushi order comes, and you pick up the pair of chopsticks as one without thinking. You stop conversation only to bring tuna to your mouth; the meat redder than your lips, the wooden sticks the color of your fingers. You and I were just sticks once, alone like the first diagram on the cheery chopstick wrapper: “Tuck under thumb and hold firmly.” And then we met - “And second chopstick hold it as you hold pencil” - My aunts taught you proper form, and now together we can pick up anything. We move in tandem toward lunch, and I’m confident watching you that no raw or …
When you recounted yourharrowing experience as theonly white girl at the store the other day,I blinked because I love you.I hoped to cover my black eyes,so you wouldn’t notice for the very first time that I’m colored and feel defensive about it.But I wanted to chink your dam with my steak knife.I know it’s not even your dam.I want to fall on your cutlery, too,and flood this place like Old Dachang –mercilessly, completely, in the name of progress. I bet our blood doesn’t even have color,bet those blue and red diagrams from grade school are lies. Lies like I like Dave Matthews and you don…
Học giỏi, con!* Sniffkiss. Sack lunch. An invocation to the god inside this child for warless, wantless futures. *Study well, child.
I know buying a house here was a good move, because the first man to bring me flowers told me so.“This is a nice neighborhood,” he noticed, as we strolled toward Wahoo! Grill for lunch. I glanced back at the pot overflowing with delicate purple supertunias newly dangling from my porch.Supertunias for a second date!He keeps talking,“Carolyn has been thinking of moving to Decatur.”Carolyn?“My wife,” he said - as if I’m the forgetful one. So the first man to bring me flowers is married. He’s not separated married, helpless and living on a futon with no one to iron his shirts.He’s unwrinkled…
When the caseworkers call to saythey do not know when English classwill resume,I understand. In the camp,it was also danger to plan.What to eat, when to eatWhen to be sickWhen someone will tell me I will gothrough the airto Georgiato live in an apartmentwith straight walls as smooth as skin.I could not plan to see snow.The first time I touched ice,it felt like fire.It felt like the first time in AmericaI touched the stoveI didn't understand.It scared me like the doctorwho put a cold instrumentto my heart with no warning. The no planning is not new, like the view is.Even the trash is …
Ponce de Leon curvesfrom Midtown's mouth toDeKalb's fertile market,leaves the scentof traffic breathand pork belly on my skin.Old trees glow greenagainst construction-colored clouds.I wipe the spray from my windshield.How I could drownin a puddle's streetlamp eyes.
