by Christy Bailes
Academic Scratch
Literary Criticism they call,
as I play desert Jenga
with Abbey’s books,
spurring academic scratch
into my elbow, while
his words keep
piling anarchy blocks
that hiss from post-it
tongues, charming words
on paper. I can’t stop
digging Cactus Ed’s
life, even though prickly
criticism articles wait
for me to stop
becoming his
anti-literary wife.
—————————
Chop-walker
My turkey legs hopscotch
America’s ovens, slow-baking
white meat into bagged jerky
behind my leg, forcing
chop-walker steps
over my face, crooked
disgust as I pass holes,
spraying ghost clouds
that wrap lace around
leathered freckle-
stops, punctuating
my life closer together
until jerky shards
fall, leaving a
runner’s trail.
—————————
The Screeching Bird and Snorting Dog
Music. Every note must happen like it is supposed to happen on the page. My life looks like that. I move like notes on a page because they have metered guidance. So, do the notes tell me what to do more than the person judging the notes? When I speak of the person judging, I refer to the conductor or a clarinet professor or a simple listener. My mind cannot compute two different sources, the notes or the person judging the notes.
English. Every word must happen like it is supposed to happen on the page. My life looks like that too. I move like words on a page because they have rhetorical guidance. So, do the words tell me what to do more than the person judging the words? When I speak of the person judging, I refer to the reader. My mind cannot compute two different sources, the words or the person judging the words.
I play clarinet. When I hold it in my hand, I read notes in the most precise manner possible until my soul breathes life into them. When that happens, I cannot be held responsible. My soul will jump ahead or hold back, moving with the line, as instinctive as a wave. Then it happens. The judge, a screeching bird ripping through my soul. I have practiced hours. I must practice hours. The work has been done. But that bird, screeching about a piece of dead animal that it wants right out of my notes.
So I write. When I write, I punctuate in the most precise manner as possible until my soul breathes life into the words. When that happens, I cannot be held responsible. My soul will jump a comma, hop a period, and run over a semicolon; and the colon turns into my eyes, as if I am on the ground and balancing my body sideways. I grab the dash, my weapon, and start jabbing as hard as possible at the judge, a snorting dog with a piece of cat hair stuck in its sinus canal. I keep jabbing my adventures–with each move, another page of grammar I have learned, gone. Oh, have I read grammar books, pages and pages. The work has been done. I have punctuated for hours. Adventurous beauty, battled all over fifty of the United States. But that snorting dog keeps scooting its butt over my words.
Category: Poetry