Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Donora Hillard
 

Devolution

Then it happens. We're no longer locked together with
me calling sorry to the neighbors. Our ribs soon stop
speaking. Your fingers slip from my mouth.You fall to
one knee to count names of the dead. I cut my lips to
ribbons, lick the loss.

-previously published at Dogzplot
 

How to Love a Surrealist

Try to ignore poems he's written
for women before you that compare
 
their feet to lemons. Laugh when
he claims ants follow him everywhere.
 
If he doesn't call you one night,
picture him in Detroit, cutting his hair
 
in the mirror with kitchen scissors.
When he finally whispers I love you
 
for the first time, know he really means
The axe is near the staircase.

-previously published at Blossom Bones

 
Lake St. Clair

There is a house. A bed and its implications.
A man and woman unaccustomed to mercy.
The old jokes: Stay away. We're bad news.

A kindling in the throat. Then water, metal.

There will be an oath made in blood, in hair.
He will lay his knives down on her.
She will talk to him with her whole body.

-previously published at Night Train
 

After The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

I.
So you would love me,
I told you how I spat in the face
of the man who hit me for two years.
How I laughed, manic like the heroine,
even while he sank his teeth into my thigh.

II.
I thought of furniture made of bone.
A feather-covered killing floor.
The body’s meat hoisted onto a hook.
How I wanted you to twist my will,
drag me into a room, and slam the door.

-previously published at Spooky Boyfriend
 

Husband

This lake has a woman's name.

On the drive up here, upstate New York
spread out before us like an old wound,
she told me of the dream she keeps having.
In it, a woman bleeds onto a man's kitchen floor.
One of her thighs is raised. Her lover
stares from the next room.

I know this woman is good , she said.
How ? I asked.
She cleans up after herself .

Later, I watched a couple walk into the cottage
behind ours. He had a lean, wolfish face. She
followed close. Their ring fingers were both naked.
I thought about the girl later, whether she winces
whenever they pass a wedding procession.

I think there are no great tragedies anymore.
Instead, we stumble into dark houses alone, consider
ex-spouses, catch shreds of fur and skin in our throats.
It's like when she asks me if she's gained weight and
I tell her that no, she's beautiful.

I walk down to the water alone.

-previously published at Bowl of Milk

3 comments:

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  2. Glad to see you have picked up the pen and are writing again. I find your work stunning!

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