Stout Women

Title: The yellow kitchen Artist: Mary Sauer Source: unsubconscious

Our First Place

Just before we left the rental On Howard St

I looked back The clean Swept tiles Lifting a little Here And there

The sink with its hidden leak The stove in its random corner

One wonky cupboard door Chipped Formica

But the extravagant yellow I fell in love

It wasn’t grand It was haphazard and spare But we were happy Here.

-Skye

Source: visualstatic101

Tides

Mooring lost Battered upon the sharp reef I could only be counted as flotsam A bottle with no message Driven out into a howling sea Without a cry

Stranded in this bottle I lost the sea Peering out through the wavy glass I saw nothing I felt nothing So fearful was the loss

The bottle has long broken There are bits of sea glass That can’t cut anyone Even me Scattered now Among my bones

You ask me to examine them now These old hurts and betrayals I see only soft light The kind you find both at dawn and sunset

We are all subject to the tide I suppose, It steals our voice and brings it back again.

-Skye

Artist: Nester Formetera Source:peepchic

The Last Kiss

We came together in the end Lips pressed close Eyes closed to who we had become Just before parting.

-Skye

On Loving a Poet

A poet speaks Imprecisely

Leaves room between words

Your voice so exacting in your desire terrifies her

As if you would pin her meanings to the pages

Turning wonder Into dead butterflies

You love her but cannot fathom her language

You drown in it Reaching for her

Placid on the far shore She throws pages and pages

Written for you Into the wind

-Skye

Source: Miles Johnson

The Lover’s Lament

At first I did not understand The roots you planted

Grew Through Me

Leaving me Pinned to The ground.

-Skye

Photograph Title: “Angel of Death” Sculpture of a Funeral Gondola, Venice 1951 Photographer: Paolo Monti

Gondola

May the angel go before you and clear the way

I will ride with you but only to San Michele

Gliding by Our favorite haunts The rainy doorway where we met Our favorite espresso The hat shop where you bought me that Fantastical hat

My memories, My loud weeping My love so still in your box

During our last gondola ride.

-Skye

Sacrament of the Sick

Somewhere north of midnight the priest’s prayers flicker through the hall a verse for each bead on the rosary twisted in your fingers a forgiveness for each sin real and imagined 

I have morphine and lorazepam I have a few precious minutes to wait with you

Yet It’s the priest with tired old prayers and absolutions in pleasing baritone that stills your thrashing that quiets your moans 

I don’t understand this young man in the cassock who will never wear a wedding ring bathing you in ancient words perfect in their cadence never straying from the book held absently

When you join him your weak voice dragged up from ether

I mouth quietly The relic of childhood Effortlessly bubbling up to join you

Yea though I walk through the valley of death…  -Skye

Photographer: Tartarchuk Nikolay Source: elinka

The Dead Sea

Quicksilver Crystalline Cut with milky sun Salt grows Out of barren Water.

-Skye

Source: Visualtastic101

Modern Man

Bits of plastic Bone buttons Baling wire

We come from the dust Only to remake ourselves In our own Image.

-Skye

Plague Doctor

So here in the shining city on the hill we watched the broad plain with its shifting grasses always thinking the trouble would arrive at the gate announcing itself.

But no, it crept in in ones and twos broken glass lungs etched in X-rays seeping in under the gate.

We could not fathom the wave of misery that broke us open.

The burbling cry of wet breath that choked the air filling every corner.

We wailed for answers.

The plague doctor came surveying the heaps of dead plying us with platitudes and potions crying “Let them inject bleach!”

Pushing out the dead early in the morning I saw him shambling down the hill.

Empty eyes behind his mask and blood on his hands.

-Skye