Chasing
Speaking of rainbows, today’s was magnetic. Of course,
absent the rain shouldn’t it be called a hallucination? We fell
over ourselves trying to get to the end of it. “The gold!” You cried, “Is utterly unverifiable,” like Don Quixote, except he
chased windmills. I stuttered into numbness wanting to say, “I’m here!” in spite of the lie in it. Something was not right
about the day, rainbows, or plain-bows, aren’t supposed to set people on edge, yet this one did. At the closest point, you were
red, a deep-hearted, open-veined geyser. I was orange, not a spray-tan snafu, but naked, moist, like a skinless peach. Oh,
how the others squealed! Their empty hands holding tight to leprechauns, delirious, drunk on green and blue charging like
donkeys in an indigo dream. Until we fell, spilling our serpents, crawling after spare change, choked and empty
things, discarded wrappers, broken bottles, evaporated quixotic arches of ephemeral glee.
There’s not enough left in us to say “Goodbye.”
So, we lay here in the melting sun,
remembering as if we were together,
having left without saying a word.
Originally published by BlazeVox in BlazeVox15, December 2015. Published in My Myths (Yellow Chair Review, 2017)
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Hungover
My last glass went down on the top note
of Il Dolce Suono Lucia di Lammermoor.
From there I fell upward to the cat cloud,
my mouth fur-thick, thick with fur—
I can’t even say it.
For a second the sunlit tabby arched high,
reaching for invisible stars. Why daytime?
This diva’s done, consumed by fire and sun,
over here, adrift on sweat island,
miles from any ocean, still looking for that note.
I hear myself say, “Can’t be no place”
and imagine that sky-cat’s claws in motion,
kneading the air into tendrils of vapor,
distilling breakfast like a good kitty.
Such a pity that I don’t make sense anymore,
praying to an empty glass,
in case God helps those that fuck themselves.
Originally published by BlazeVox in BlazeVox15, December 2015. Published in My Myths (Yellow Chair Review, 2017)
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The Shelves
Harry refused to listen.
Eventually, he had his ears removed.
He hung shelves where his ears used to be.
His wife wanted to put curios from Hawaii on the shelves,
a hula girl, a ukulele boy.
But, Harry never heard her request.
He placed a saltshaker on one side of his head and a peppermill on the other.
By nightfall Harry had forgotten the shelves.
At dinner he demanded seasoning for his meat.
His wife pointed to the shelves.
Not understanding her gesture, he pounded the table with his fists, until the salt crashed to the floor.
Harry grabbed his wife and shouted,
“Now look what you’ve done!”
Published in My Myths (Yellow Chair Review, 2017)
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Bones
The moment Zach woke up
he knew his bones had been stolen.
He slid out of bed and hit the floor with a thud.
Wouldn’t he have felt the thieves pulling his skeleton out?
Bewildered, he ran through all the possibilities.
Aliens? No.
Monsters? No.
If not criminals, then what?
Skull-less, one ear pinned to the ground, his slack face pointed at a stack of old ballots under his bed.
All the votes he never cast.
Zach knew that no one had stolen bones,
he’d given them away.
In ruin on the floor he ached to take a stand but he couldn’t,
he had no bones.
Published in My Myths (Yellow Chair Review, 2017)
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New Year After Blood Sacrifice
Give me newness: every single day
Unfettered glee gasping for more
The courage to fast, to pass on misery
even when it’s free
Stand apart, invent, devise. Refuse
to hold the knife over anyone on
the altar built for the uneducated
Their blood sacrifice, their invisibility,
not marked on the calendar, not as
cusp, new moon or full. Dark matter,
mattering, immeasurable, an unnoticed
void, ignored. Vacuous gaping mouths,
eyes, blinded by the light
A new year is coming, reject
Orwell’s precognitive tale, don’t ride
H.G. Well’s time machine into a future
resembling the past.
All the unwell must celebrate anyway
Drink yellow water and call it champagne
The death of the old and familiar,
all we’ve taken for granted, fading
memories on receipts printed with
vanishing ink become chants, lore
Can one call an election an “ugly baby”
without society taking offense?
The ugly baby is coming, hungry for all
that remains. Fireworks, finery, a feast of
succulent lambs for slaughter.
Breathe deep, in years to come,
another child, Hope, young, old Soul,
giggling at all that behold her beauty
Next year, or the year after, someday,
sometime, another chance to change
Published by Dispatches Editions, 2017 as part of the Resist Much Obey Little anthology.
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Lost Tribe
My crib was a plastic laundry basket. In it I was,
swaddled and tucked in the design of a story
My family layered it like sediment, as rich
as the reservation’s cliffs I called home
In time, I’d fall to the stones below. A kite cut
from its tether. My heritage, drowned in
the gene pool. My memories altered. My
identity, my story, taken by a sudden
light, a darkroom door opened, turning
partially developed images white
(published by Five Willows Poetry Review, June 2016)
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Writer
I took a wrong turn in my novel.
It happened on page 92, I stumbled too far ahead.
The protagonist went from twelve to sixteen.
I guess that means I’m writing a series.
I cut it out and pasted it into a new doc.
On a break, I go into the living room.
Man has assembled our new tent.
Zipped inside we remember mountains, beaches, rain.
Nothing and everything has changed.
Man says we should plan a trip.
I say, “My first free weekend is months out.”
Let slip that I’m thinking of my book.
Bob Marley sings, “Don’t worry about a thing.”
I’d like to be worry-free for years, forever.
I love man, but being a writer is 24/7.
Th pain of not finishing exceeds that of rejection.
The year is over before I open the calendar.
I’m tethered to my home, a mobile jingling in the wind.
Too often alone, on the keyboard, my fingers traveling fast.
I stop writing to go to “work.”
I take notes for my novel in the car.
I can’t stop now, ever.
(published by Five Willows Poetry Review, June 2016)
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The Fisherwoman
Sitting on the face of the moon
I fish the oceans of Earth
casting long line’s of love-struck
to billions of loneliness
Occasionally, I reel one to my heart
Sometimes, I fall out of my boat and
swim among the stars, in Scorpio,
Pisces and Cancer. If what I’ve caught
is lost I’ll talk of the one that got away
(published by Five Willows Poetry Review, June 2016)
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Uncle
In the 70’s, I knew
the reservation blues,
its cattails and mosquito swamps,
lost territory, lost time, and booze –
Uncle, it’s not sleep if you can’t wake up
So sweet are copper brown eyes,
lost like pennies in the mud,
to give luck to the rich. We, “small fries”
painted red, yellow, and turquoise trinkets,
miniature totem poles for tourists
watching poverty dance, “in costume,”
to a foreign beat
The Star-Spangled Banner or
I pledge allegiance to – survival.
All kinds of lost
minds, wet wool, tobacco,
smoldering fires
Uncle, do all great spirits
turn to shadows
behind missing trees?
(published by Five Willows Poetry Review, June 2016)
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Twenty-five Realizations In Five Days
- I’m not good at roughing it.
- Drinking more than three glasses of wine is dangerous.
- Drinking more than four beers leads to uncontrollable laughter.
- Hard liquor can undermine one’s ability to tell a story.
- Sometimes others can undermine one’s ability to tell a story.
- Copious amounts of liquor can make sleeping scrunched up in one’s car feel like a five-star hotel.
- Regardless of truth, people don’t like to think about, or understand, what they haven’t lived.
- The cynicism to understanding ratio needs to shift.
- I’m not likely to conform to the one accepted model of being that is pushed by society today.
- I’m secretly praying for the return of the fabulous adventurer.
- I would have enjoyed being a contemporary of Hunter S. Thompson or Dorothy Parker.
- I forgive other people’s mistakes because I make mistakes.
- Some people are too invested in being self-righteous.
- People under forty no longer live interesting lives.
- The exceptions to #14 make one damn glad to have met them.
- People that have travelled and lived still know more than those that haven’t, but one can no longer say this aloud.
- An outstanding ability to reiterate what one has learned doesn’t guarantee wisdom.
- The deeply wounded forgive more than those that merely pity themselves for attention.
- There are two kinds of people, those that, as Emanuel Zola said, “Live life loud” and the other type that don’t get my attention.
- There are always more than two kinds of people.
- The writer’s life might not be opulent, but it’s prodigious.
- The bluest sky I’ve ever seen was on a rainy day.
- When the sun is bright and the rain hard, drops can tear holes in space revealing the Imaginal Realm.
- I’ve lost most of the weekend.
- One doesn’t have to be good at roughing it to do it.
Kelle Grace Gaddis - Writer 