When Miguel started tilling their front yard, it confirmed his mother’s fears. Working in the chicken factory had made her son crazy.
“Don’t worry Mama. Just wait until March, then the stench will disappear.” Since her husband’s death, his Mom had ceased cooking, sitting each day at the kitchen table, running her fingers over the woodwork of her deceased husband. She sat with the impassioned face of the bereaved; sunk, overburdened by sadness. Miguel believed she needed nature’s cure: sun, air, oxygen and clover, an aromatherapy though he never called it that. He trusted nature a lot more than her doctor’s antidepressants. To read their side effects, hair loss, suicide, facial tremors–gave him his own case of jitters.
He’d gone to the library and done his research reading that decomposed clover was a neutralizer, capable of masking the most fetid of smells.… ...continue reading
The sniper’s nest above the neighboring CITGO lies silent, for now, save for the crows picking at some unidentifiable carcass baking in the Midwest heat beneath the hothouse of an old, patched tarpaulin, the lonely body surrounded by empty beer bottles and long-spent cartridges and even longer-spent chances. Good luck gone to waste in what remains of what remains. This is the way of the world where leather sags against bent and rusted nails, where a nick is a death sentence. This is what Cole considers, surveying the situation as he stands on the ladder before climbing bodily into the reeking box as the feasting murder scatters. Sleek, funereal bodies croak in frustration as he relocates their meal to the ground below. The busted Timberland boot, exit wound blown out not for want of a nail, and the gangrenous foot within is the last to squelch over the side, the mass of old Mads landing with a dusty thud to his final resting place.… ...continue reading
Paralyzing,
hits like a flood, don’t you feel that?
Sinking inside a wave of minor punctures,
out of breath, gasping, drowning, can’t die,
by all means, it is above each one of our
pay-grades, capabilities, willingness
to raise our heads above it, and see
this is a world of muddy waters,
everywhere is under the waves,
everywhere is a flood-zone, don’t you
feel
that, wherever you look,
don’t you feel paralyzed? Being bitten constantly
by piranhas that are supposed to be everywhere,
attacked, attacked, attacked, constantly,
constantly… constantly…
can’t move, it is everywhere, a siege, don’t
you… feel… that? I do, oh god oh god
I DO,
even when I reach out, when I hold hands
in that mud, I feel the hands of others
that are drowning as I do,
but don’t want to die alone.… ...continue reading
The dove on the bare, bald branch
…………..An overcast sky makes them look black
Camera’s exposure too high, too bleak to survive ultra-white
…………..rays
Fly away fat dove, don’t let the cold
catch you
Winter is a filter
…………..To rid the world of weaklings
Besides those who warm their souls smoothly
…………..With hot whiskey and jazz
Just don’t let the drinks catch you
The dove on the bald, bare branch
Some of us just have to freeze
…………..Our picture comes out too dark, it’s too bright out
Winter white; snow blindness; thimble fingers
…………..Beer and ponche keep us heated
Some of us just have to lose
– Abigail Romero
Author’s Note: “The dove on the bare, bald branch” is one of those poems that really needs a chance to be paired with experience.… ...continue reading
Her name was Yuki. Her waist-length hair fell to the ground like a crescent moon. In her hand, a short blade glimmered: Snow Flower. It bloomed like drifting snow beneath the twilight glow. But tonight, it carried another name: Red Snow.
Snow usually meant purity — like the carefree childhood days she remembered walking through fresh snow. Back then, her husband’s family and hers were longtime friends; the two families often shared tea. At that time, her father was not yet the respected high-ranking officer he would become. Everything was peaceful.
But she knew peace was impossible now — or perhaps this was the calm before the storm. Why choose today? Because every year on this day, their wedding anniversary, her husband drank heavily, his intoxication rising gently.… ...continue reading
Small town Mississippi, way deep down, stuck
Like the roots of a garden weed that won’t let go
Bound to it’s native hold
Holding on to the one thing we know
Racism they call it
We have to choose a side
We really seem to want to
Watching the other kind celebrate
Who revels like that?
We would never do such a thing
We wear a nicer hat… ...continue reading
I am vacant-
a screaming churning chasm
of possibility
both malicious and marvelous.
My mind is an empty chalkboard
with hastily erased marks,
vanished to make room
for the teachings
of my next glossator.
I will be
your Athenian and
your Spartan,
your Madonna
and your Whore.
At a single word,
I would lick
your wounds (an ever
subservient nurse)
and climb into bed
with you after (debase
me however, so long as
you say it is my purpose).… ...continue reading