Three Crows

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15

There’s a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin.
~ Adam Duritz

A scarce rain slapped the side of the hospital in sheets.
He sat, rooted in a chair near a window.

His spirit eroded as he imagined
cells from his loins scraped from his
girlfriend’s womb like vegetation detached at its roots.
His first child killed, like one sorry weed.

Afterward, she had no strength for talking.
Three crows perched on her Jeep’s
roll bar and she shooed them
away, as the last of his
mercy wove a path into oncoming darkness
then shattered glass against her heart.

Those three crows came up each time
his fist revisited her face.

“You shooed off

*punch*

our family

*punch*

sure as you shooed off

*punch*

them crows.”

She took it until her own soul shattered,

then left him, trying to piece together
the jagged shards of everything she once was.

Brenda Warren 2013

Beat

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7

Frenetic yet precise,
snare me.
Mimic the beat
of my soul’s underside
thrumming to the rhythm of spice
and Top tobacco.
Bells and screams
whistle their way through audience appeal
as hips sway circles
far removed from earth’s dirt floor.
Move me,
pull me below the rhythm of your sin.
Swirl me up in chocolate
reflected in chrome.
Your shining beats undo me
they get beneath my skin
pull me deep inside the rhythm of your sin.

Brenda Warren 2013

Miz Quickly asked that we respond to the following video.

Man and Moon

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13

Man-And-The-Moon

Man and the Moon ~ by Andrew Wyeth 1990

A ball of hovering illumination
craters the night sky white
and draws its milky reflection
with chalk against your skin.
Man and moon forever bound.

Your Harley thrums its rumble through the air.

Brenda Warren 2013

Written for The Mag.

Sand

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25

some thoughts are afraid to be finished
half sentences hang in the air
one after another,
they build a mesh
between self and event
a key to obliterating
those solitary moments in time—
one among the 10,000 things that happen

a tear in the room of a lifetime
driven by longing
driven by night
driven through a slate-lined soul
fragile and layered—

it hangs in the air, that tear

opening a desert chasm
of scattered skeletons where
skulls pop up like boulders
casting a pall of horror and grace
over what we become
a fitting mix to dis-repair
all that we witness,
again and again,
wondering why no one
does anything

finally, we disintegrate to sand

Brenda Warren 2013

118

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Process notes: After posting the wordle words on Facebook, I sat down to watch “Attack on Darfur” on Netflix. In the first scene, journalists are talking together. They all start to say something, but don’t finish their sentences. It is unsettling because it is unspeakable. I started writing the piece based on that idea, and it came quickly. The skeletons show up because they showed up in the movie while I was writing. It felt personal, like running thoughts, so I didn’t capitalize or offer much punctuation.

No Rest on Avenue B

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25

The neighbors howl in the night
allowing sick family values
to spill across their lawn
into Luna’s waning light.

In my bed, I translate words that slur
through the air to my window
and detect escalating anger.

It’s seconds past 2 a.m.

Intractable accusations
lead to F-bombs and wailing
and I wonder if they’re drunk enough
to forget the mistakes they weave together
in the small hours of day.
These eruptions leave traces
of angst across our yards
that linger like confiscated notes
exposing secrets between friends

My conscience tells me to shut the window,
to call the police, to confront them,
but instead I lie here and listen.

There’s no rest on Avenue B tonight.

Brenda Warren 2013

Process notes: These words were difficult for me. I did not use “lab.” I wanted to write a piece about summer, but the darkness in the words prohibited its completion. So instead, I wrote about my neighbors. Although this happens a few times a year, they are generally nice people.

117

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Mental

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35

Pressure built from desire
billows in her chest until
she risks self betrayal.
It escapes in smoke from her ears
in voices that blister orders
for her to stay put.
She listens as the voices dissipate in whispers,
whispers that scare her into thinking
—it might not happen.

She shudders and climbs out of her head
passing that place
where impossible meets absolutely.

She brushes against a mannequin draped in silk,
and relishes the fabric as it swishes on her skin
soft, made by worms, resilient and coveted.
She laughs, and imagines herself Cinderella
swirling at the midsummer ball
in fabric spun from worms.

Her spirit
silences the voices
with its song.

Brenda Warren 2013

Process Notes: I watched the Australian film Mental a few weeks ago, and its characters have been hanging around in my head. A few of them were literally crazy, but one gist of the movie may be that we are all a bit mental. It’s a quirky film. In this piece, I explored the feelings of character that have permeated my imagination since watching the film.

Mental ~ 2012 Universal Pictures Australia

Mental ~ 2012 Universal Pictures Australia

116

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Bird Woman Falls is Weeping

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49

birdwomanfalls2

Bird Woman Falls ~ Glacier National Park ~ June 28, 2013 ~ Photo by Brenda Warren

Bird Woman Falls is Weeping

As light bends shadowed lanes across glacial faces,
my insignificance tumbles thoughts of self
through the hollow bones of birds
that hop in puddles through highway tunnels.

Unstable walls of ice edge stretches of the road,
forcing fallen streams of winter across our drive.

Beyond the vast and wild expanse,
Bird Woman Falls weeps showers of diamonds
over stone cliffs into a small steep meadow,
a glittering emerald island,
greened by melting glaciers
that carve a hanging valley
to feed Bird Woman’s flow.

The highway pivots mountains left and right,
a dizzying dazzling retreat for cars Going to the Sun
to bear witness to Bird Woman’s weeping
on this road that bridges canyons to heaven.

Brenda Warren 2013

115

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Without Saying Good-bye

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21

A taste of regret lingered
in the doorway where she stood
breathing in the barn’s fecundity.

Outside, swallows darted and dove,
swimming through sporadic wind currents
between two towering grain elevators.

A blur of self-doubt
fluttered in her chest, then
she pictured her heart rusty,
dulled like the hinges on the old barn door,
their original sheen eroded
over time’s long passage.

As sure as swallows ride the wind,
her heart would die there
nailed to the old barn door.

She breathed in one long last feel for the place,
then left without saying good-bye.

Brenda Warren 2013

trifecta

Shout out to the folks at the Trifecta Challenge and Poetic Bloomings for the prompts! Visit their sites to take a look at the prompts, and access links to other writer’s responses.  Support writers:  read!

The Soul’s Arsonist

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22

Prevaricating bushes lie low,
singeing an edge round his soul.
Apples hold secrets like forests hold trees
deep in the husk of their seeds.

Tracks in the cracks
of his memory’s files—
a mess too complex
to unravel.

Serpents still tempt him
and steal his intention,
splitting his answers
down forks in his tongue.
They snake through branches in bushes
as he douses the branches in gas.

He thinks about playing with matches
and laughs, losing his pale to the glow—
to the flickering trail of lies that writhes
at the edge of his deep apple soul.

Damming its freedom to flow,
oh yeah,
he damns its freedom to flow.

Brenda Warren 2013

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Note:  The word “class” from the wordle, did not make an appearance in my piece this week.

The Drowning Sea

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14

Beneath water’s churning load,
eternity splits into pieces of
before and after.
Waves tunnel caves of grief
through a crazy chattering frenzy of ocean,
swallowing villages,
indiscriminately scooping
anything into its roil.

Frothing beaches melt into a sea
that belches a mass of debris
shattering a wake of absence
with its own broken pieces
cut from before
heaped into after
moonshine and foam.

An invisible sense of delivery
from evil
giggles up from the bottom
of the deep blue sea.
Dark and alluring,
it waits.

Brenda Warren 2013

113

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