Electrical Storm
Night clots
in blue-black and hums nostalgic,
telephone
wires caught by wind snake on walls,
frantic,
barely tethered. I'm obsessed with regrets.
Clouds
collide and spark, trees ripple
like sheets
under a fan that spins so fast
it rocks
back and forth in its plaster socket,
threatens
to buck loose from the ceiling.
Is it
raining where you are? I shake him awake.
My damp
hair is cold, smooth like riverbed stone
sprays in
tentacles across his stomach.
In the
faceless dark, I'm a chasm, bottomless,
the sky
groans on in ominous minor key.
I want,
want unspeakable things, floods, catastrophe.
I’m So Tired
hello brick
wall, cratered planet, dusty corners,
28 has been
so dull, dead weight,
another box
of junk in the attic.
jesus, no
one tries anymore,
not like we
used to, spit and sparked
with so
much trying, lit each other up.
goodbye
impulse, goodbye feathered past.
now spiders
wait until the lights go out,
wander up
from the basement,
tiptoe
politely along the baseboards,
moths beat
screens, but softly, barely a whisper
of
summer thrashings. we drink heavy,
talk
of rain, rust in our sleep.
Sour
I
I was,
quite honestly, a disappointment,
prone to
poor decisions, spectacular naiveté,
a slave to
the teenage complex
and I
remember the moment I knew you lost faith in me,
midnight, December
of the new millennium,
another
year looming with malicious intent.
II
The last
words you say to your father
will never
be satisfactory in retrospect.
Keep it
simple.
III
What was it
you were whispering?
Middle of
the night, somber,
Plotting my
future? Drop out?
Teenage
mother? Do I miss you?
Guilt
ridden or vindictive,
Whatever my
reasons,
10 years
and I still haven't visited.
The
Ropes
Everything
I learned was from movies,
Censored,
abruptly cutting
From heavy
make outs to closed doors,
Morning
behind bedroom curtains,
Maybe a
close up of a woman's face,
That heavy
lidded look like an onslaught of faith,
An O
perfect mouth I practiced in the mirror
Timid
pin-up poses, tried on sex
Like a girl
walking in heels for the first time.
Once we
were filed into the auditorium of our junior high
So a man
could preach the preciousness of our bodies.
As we
squirmed in wooden seats, sweat under our arms,
Foreheads
shiny, acne prone, he plucked
A group of
graceless thirteen year olds from the front row,
Took a
single piece of tape, stuck it to an arm of each in turn,
Said, 'See
how it loses its hold with each new person I stick it to?'
Girls, never
trust a man that says it won't hurt.
You'll be
ripped raw, boys will run 'round this city
With
sizable pieces of you in their back pockets.
CP
Erin Cisney is a graduate of Franklin &
Marshall College and a lifelong resident of Pennsylvania. In addition to being
a poet, wife and mother, she enjoys baseball, horror movies and indie rock. Her
work has appeared previously in Spry Literary Journal.
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