Four
Poems...
Finding
Titantium
Mining for courage in an
early morning ritual.
Muscle and bone strain forward
as the mind ticks backwards.
Scanning membranes and synapses
for handholds of fault.
Each step flips through
a folder
of moments categorized by
seasons.
The sound of a car going
past
pulls the brain back to
the legs.
She slams shut the cerebral
file cabinet of past encounters
and
thinks of writing a self
help book
filled with the wisdom of
pop psychology
bumper stickers that never
move.
A passing bicycle creates
another solar plexus sinkhole
until two words –
better now-
whisper through enough energy
to inhale oxygenated threads.
Stitching together the edges
of a slice disinfected with
nine months of tears.
The
Italian American Death Counselor
Goes to Work
Monday morning and we’re
live from death central.
Yellow walls and rainbow
colored
reminders of those left
behind
collide with an earl grey
stained sky.
Her power line view remains
unchanged.
For twenty years these
walls
have gathered leaves of
grief that
drop from branches who continue
to grow.
Resolutely bending in a
tornado vortex of
The Day After.
Appetite
She spent years
cultivating a hunger
to fill emptiness the records
show
started before birth.
A flashing vacancy sign
uncovers the former temptation
to soak her life in D.
Detached
Devoid
Disillusioned
With tiny bites
she learns to eat
an existence that begins
with A
Awake
Alive
Alone
Progression
Connection
Soft lines ease into brass
studded vinyl backing
as recognition stretches
a cord
between foreigners who hydrate
discovery with 32 ounces
of theory.
In silent agreement they
blink away
sweat stains of practicality.
Each one swallowing cancerous
memory
cells shadowed in blue light
Collusion
Limbic systems rub against
each other
long enough to find intimacy
among friends becoming strangers.
In a purple hollow of nowhere
else to go
borrowed life braids thought
with skin.
They wake in a new land
bound
by paper fences of comfort.
Cessation
Lines harden and leave marks
in this country where the
air hurts.
Traversing a familiar war
meadow
cardiac pioneers track new
paths between the dead
bodies of those who continue
to breathe.
Malignancy soon returns
on a horse
biting knives as it bleeds
through
a tether of sharpened ice.
.
Jana
DeCristofaro recently discovered
the pleasure of subjecting
others to her melodramatic
rants and raves about life
and death. As a social worker
with grieving children and
teens in Portland, Oregon
she spends her time surrounded
by sticky fingers and stories
of loss. Her first two poems
were published by the webzine
Indite Circle.
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