Missing the Groundhog’s Shadow

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16

Open to the cadence of the crow
we cast stories across the groundhog’s hole
bucolic permutations
to stroke our common soul.

Shadows come and shadows go
across the land from clouds and sun.
At Gobbler’s Knob the shadow’s done.

Former this, potential that,
the inner circle tiptoes past
in long black coats and tall top hats
like a balance to be thrown.

This hoopla haunting Gobbler’s Knob
ignores synergy of sky and sun;
it ignores the groundhog’s shadow.

The president in top hat black
declares which scroll the groundhog picks
with a nebulous nod of its nose
a scroll that depicts
the weather to expect
it alternates the edges
of the stories that we own
with six more weeks of winter.

~~~~~

Brenda Warren 2014

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Our Plastic Soul

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28

A continually conjured death storm
churns through ocean gyres,
where albatross gather trinkets of death
then carry them back to their family nest.
Human neglect slides down necks.
Bottle caps, lighters, tubing, and knobs.
Fishing twine: human dreck.

Stomachs impacted with plastic trash
albatross struggle and moan.
Disregard sighs as bird spirits die beneath
consumption’s immortal disguise.

Ashes to ashes and plastic to bone
back bending vertebrae of the unknown
filaments flutter as feathers unfurl
through garbage that haunts
and ever uncurls
reflecting our plastic soul.

~

Brenda Warren 2014

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Grief’s (surreal) Dream

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23

His whispers first caress
her body’s field
like apple blossoms
covered in bees.

And then,
she sees flames come,
come licking scarlet vines
across his back,
commemorating sleep’s inevitability,
vicious and unforgiving.

A severed pair expects
no spare moments,
no moments to share
behind a smoke
-strewn
sky.

Until . . .

Save me in bits, she prays.

His screams strike might
like irons against time’s silent crescendo,
while her heated flesh whispers
and wakes her
to the dizzying scent
of apple blossoms buzzing.

Brenda Warren 2014

This one came rather quickly. It is not autobiographical, but grief imagined. There is a lot left unsaid. My imagination fills it with story, and I hope yours hooks into the piece, too.

I used “strike” instead of “struck.”

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A Montana Sentence for the New Year

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5

Sitting beneath ponderosa’s
sparse, but rising skirt,
where life precedes death
in the underworld of winter,

a human breathes in
cold Montana forests
and exhales extraneous adjectives
while sister wind shakes winter
from ponderosas’ green-needle reach,
and branch-covered darkness dissipates
promising hope
in the first morning
of tomorrow’s new year.

Brenda Warren 2013

Process notes: My goal was to imagine being in a place that I would like to be, and write a piece in one sentence from that space regarding the new year.

Thank you for your time in this space last year. I will go outside and caw into the darkness a few times this evening. Happy New Year!!

Cocooned

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12

Perhaps a tincture will synchronize
the spilling smithereens choice
spins into her spirit,
an integral tincture laced with chance
to tint her thinking risky.

Softly she prays for answers
held in liquid’s sway.

Dancing against maps
lined along her tongue
she blasts the tip of existence
with butterfly kisses that whisper good-bye.

Brenda Warren 2013

141

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The Angel in the Box

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21

The angel in the box lies in wait.

Sound’s empty waves obscure the face of her moon,
as turbulence flutters through her feathers
in a space simple and compact
like Earth’s confined clay.

She imagines the snatches of humanity
who imprisoned her, immobile and apart,
locked inside this simple angel trap.

Oh, how she longs for music,
like a junkie with a fix,
a mix of minor-stringed No Crows, some harp,
and a little folk in her range to help cover time.

The angel prays that the blundering pair who trapped her here
will lift the lid before her wings lose their luster
and there is no need for her balm.

Brenda Warren 2013

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Chasing Facebook

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21

Cloak life in blue butterflies.
Pursue it like Venus,
wild, sometimes cruel.

Love it to addiction,
built inside screens of light,
a beloved prison
a kaleidoscopic lens
to skirt the real world.

Hovering digital spies parse through social media.
Algorithms search for a marketing niche.
Everything on Facebook is colored with sidebars of cash
proclaiming gods of commerce supreme.
Keep clicking.
Keep coming back.
Search for goods.

It’s almost Christmastime.

*********

The person who dies with the most toys,
still stops breathing.

Brenda Warren 2013

138

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invisible nails bring feelings of betrayal

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13

(knock. it. off.)

Indefatigable fists emit impulses of energy
up her solar plexus
sparking ideas that fly from her head.

Precise and Infinite hits.

She wants people to kneel at their creation
while she pounds invisible nails
into her palms.

She grows accustomed to the distance people keep.

Tidal rhythms ebb and flow
with whisperings of bitterness
and how you never know.

Betrayed, she wrings her hands in her lap.

Brenda Warren 2013