Poetry: Lara Crombie
one for hiding under beds.
You’ve left Dorothy in chiffon and beaten. Last year the magazines extended
your subscription for being a valued customer. Daily vitamins are stored in
moisture resistant canisters and sweaters are packed with mothballs. You’ve
eaten in your closet with the sweaters. Sandwiches, alone, and a nursery
rhyme about pretty maids in a row. They say “bone soup.” There’s an Asian
root shaped like a heart. Tragic stories lack bathroom scenes. You say
fucking feels alliterative, Tetris blocks falling at increasing speed.
You’ve held babies and lost orgasms. Faith, blanched. TV’s on. The ocean
never looked bigger.
verisimilitude.
Kitchen smells of vacuum dust and mother’s full of silent virtue: she saw
boys with Anglo-Saxon names like Chad and Luke hold hands, going no place
but some death valley where they read fiction by saintly whores not yet 16,
both sick on subtle syntax and wayfaring blues, Dylan knew. Bottle prophets
ridicule but boys that love drink strong. Still curious, he’ll lean across
your arm and ask, you’ll know—the music swells, Blue Bayou on the radio,
kids in cars smoke thin reeds as mothers paint their nails.