Fly

By Diana G Peck

Bacon, eggs, and toast
at 1pm in the afternoon.
4:20pm, still in nightgown,
click, click, click…
A song on you tube,
then a poem posted
that stings
naked flesh
beneath the gown
at 4:25pm in the afternoon.

Don’t call.
Don’t message.
Don’t,
don’t,
don’t.

A fly in the web,
now dangling,
a single, silken thread
hooked precariously
around a tattered wing;
fluttering words to hang onto.

My keys, the condoms,
what difference, really?
I won’t go in after either.

I used to say these legs
could carry me anywhere
you or
you,
or
you
didn’t want me to go.

Now, I look down at
the skinny, useless,
insect parts left;
at the one good wing,
at the one caught in the string,
at my distance to
surety…

A fly
who can’t.
Absurd.

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Applause

By Diana G. Peck

It’s hard to run in shoes
that are just too tight.
Whether they were your own,
once,
or someone else’s
borrowed.

I try to keep up
with the flow of conversation,
my feet aching,
my mind full;
spilling out of my mouth
before
tested out on page.

Here;
I am told my soul no longer
belongs to
me.
There;
I am told between bottles of wine
and pocketfuls of bourbon
that the poetry crowd
on the bottom of town
is just too full of people
off the street;
no one of consequence.

I remember you,
Dutch.
I remember how my mind was blown
right out of those shoes;
given a new freedom to roam
those streets,
those untidy sheets
scribbled on between
shots of dope
and chewed up ecstasy.

Brilliant what the mind can do
to get out of itself and
into view.
He rode his skateboard around us
in circles.

The napkins and the sheets of
borrowed paper
blew out of his pocket one day
while no one was looking.
No one caught them
to place in a diary
like dried flowers,
too delicate to survive,
unbound.

I remember you,
Dutch.

I take my shoes off in the potters field
and rest my bright red,
tightly pressed toes
in the soft new grass of uncertainty.

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