Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar
Bio: Chani
Zwibel is the author of Cave Dreams to
Star Portals and Star Portals to Cash Registers. She is an associate
editor with Madness Muse Press. She graduated from Agnes Scott College in 2011.
She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta,
Georgia, with her husband and their dog.
Grief Stages
In respect for the dead we will now have a final brief
visitation. Please come in this room is quite small. Bid your last farewells. How do undertakers have such bright tropical
fish? Someone must undertake the task of mourning. Someone must devote their
lives to the dead. A perfect circle
never ends. But there is no perfection here, only a staged resemblance.
Grey cloak of cloud, weeping slow rain, observing the sun,
ride upon a black steed to the edge of darkness, find me here. Serving the
whims of the monster at large, the demon in the kingdom of dust. A blur of
faces caught between the fear of dying young and the desire to save money. The
dark shadow calls many to its service, although few understand its ways. It
feasts on mischief. Do not despair. Do not drown in sorrows. Its ancient tie to
this land, its old hold upon a bloody tree stump, long dissolved into the earth
keeps it here, but it recognizes when you are of the light. It begs your
service as a fence, needs tenders at the gates of darkness.
Despair likes to squat on my shoulder digging its talons
into my back, and it whispers into my ear how I’ll never be good enough. I can
smell the hot stench of its breath. I try to shake it off, but it is
comfortable in its roost with its claws tangled in my hair, confident it will
keep me where it wants me forever. I
fight it, infused with living, ebullient, light turned-on, energy burning like
an ancient sun.
Mother and Father, a brief sketch
Lay-minister, prophetess, tiny dancer, screaming, crying,
weeping, praying, hands in dishwater, garden earth, folded laundry, vacuum
cleaner, sweeper song, lemon furniture polish, hurricane lamps, rose-painted
domes.
“Dig a hole in the backyard and throw me in it”, hands
grimed tar black smell of fish and steel, steering wheel, screeching tires,
chew wad at gum line, brown spit in iced-tea carton lemon-tea-tobacco, brown
beer bottles. Stacked in recycling bins, crates of emptied addiction.
College Educated
You can understand
Only a shadow
Of what is:
When the dinosaur comes out of the forest, you shoot him.
Certain objects are worth
More than others.
Far from home, I study new education.
I know song writers and linguists, journalists, scientists,
women of renown.
We are all slowly dying by increments.
I learn a desire for a modern world:
Shiny, new and geometric, a buzzing place, with plenty of
machines.
These poems feel as if they came singing out of my own heart.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm glad they touched you!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm so glad they touched you.
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