The Villainess

I did not care what he was doing when the weather sank to static

Under the empty road, the pallid flatness, the grey horizon.

Did he shatter our clasped hands? It is not that important to know.

Did he lie down, deaf to it all?

Outside the city the bicycles whisper by like the soulless left to die.

Streets ablaze. The newspaper seller crumples.

In my lover's apartment the truth stood still keeping close its shriveled polyester.

And the blindness of the victim rooted, lamppost like, and vertical.

Easily turning from the sighs, the introspective.

The sighs did not let loose a man from the clay.

A spirit outside the vice-less, and the clean air rises.

These are the odorless seconds, somewhere in the yard.

No, not the truth, smashed and rotten like memories,

And I am this woman, look at my frown,

The life-giver? Everyone is alive.

Everyone is indoors.

A stench of stagnancy, faded walls.

No moon, silent shards.

Excitable child outside a white window

And the television blurs like a newborn baby.

It did not present itself as a dull slow-moving stone -

Did it not disappear like blunt sex?

It is not elixir.

Which of the pure, the free of the falling sickness, did it keep numb?

My body in pieces. My body is everywhere.

So very different to solidification.

Feet first, its presence in the last days. It was subdued

And in reward was kept safe like popsicles

That shimmer, freezer-burned.

My pale spine is waiting.

Supple, as a stream might slink.

My beautiful bones kissed, feels so …

Then an exit, there was nobody here.

And their flesh sank, and the sun wept.

Sometime later the drowned sand dunes, the oncoming tide.

Fluorescent mother, dead, engulfed.

I run on water, husband.

Everything is above me now, free like mildew.

Thousands of pine cones on the forest floor. Forget me.

Reviews

[Matthew Kult]

Destructively Scorned

Great Read

Matthew

[Leslie Philibert]

Jacob`s excellent review gets it exactly right,this is a `Howl`like exposition of sadness and loss,beat poetry with the creative imagery of a Herta Müller..excellent.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

this is amazing...Rosalind...it captures me like reading Sexton or Plath...where life seems a madness and we are all waiting for that madness to stop...

and it is almost like a parallel to the son and to the virgin mary...trying to find wisdom, trying to protect man while the humans destroy themselves...and we wonder if God is watching at all, paying attention at all...

and at the end of this piece.....everything is above me now....great line...unlike the typical...i have moved on and am above it all...somewhere in a universe above...no, i am still here where i was...on the ground...covered in the mildew that all other things are free of.

j.

[Rosalind Gale]

Dear Jacob ... thank you so very much for your lovely review. It means a lot to me as I don't get to write much anymore, and perhaps more importantly, I don't get to read much either. Please know I appreciate you now, as I have in the past. Thanks again -
Rosa
-x-

[Coyote Poetry]

This poem is so good my friend.
"Sometime later the drowned sand dunes, the oncoming tide.
Fluorescent mother, dead, engulfed.
I run on water, husband.
Everything is above me, free like mildew.
Thousands of pine cones on the forest floor. Forget me."
The story in the poem brought me in and I wanted to read and know more. You danced on many topics and took the reader with. Thank you Rosalind for sharing the outstanding poetry.
Coyote

[Rosalind Gale]

Thank you my friend, you know I always appreciate your words -
-x-

[Coyote Poetry]

Is my pleasure and you are welcome.

[Corset]

Who could possibly forget the unforgettable, nor the unforgivable? I've been waiting for your next post and I hope I get to be the first review, not that anything after will feel used, you are unique and so lovely, I have missed your writing, Hugs and Kisses to Scarlet.

[Rosalind Gale]

Thank you xox I'll message you in a bit xx

[Corset]

I was hoping movement from this corner of my peripheral meant that you had spun some incredible thoughts to save me from my very dull own. These, I read again as I tried to see , as in a dream , some fleeting grasp of escape, nothing solidified quite the way that you did.