Poetry
published by Retort Magazine, on July 19th, 2011Rust
Dear Evee, my love for you, was fake and invented
just like this poem masquerading as a letter.
You do not do any more, We were
a white tennis shoe in which I lived
like a toe, able to move but trapped
to your foot, afraid to speak or breathe.
Today, my neighbor tossed a nail ridden
tire on his greasy green lawn, and then I knew it was
your beauty that kept me inside the tennis shoe.
I think beauty binds as well as a deflated
tire secures a wheel, and love strains to inflate
and fill this gap between rim and rubber.
Nothing not even love is permanent.
Nails and rust prove this so, as well as
the uselessness of beauty, without love
to support it. Beauty is a rim coated in speckled rust
like blotches of dull red paint on a gray wall
kept complete by a leaking tire once full of love’s air.
—
The Axes and the Tree
Some said that John was a piece
of scrap paper that Kara used
then threw away. After her doorknob
Entered its latch, a bullet piercing
thick metal, it seemed so, and all John
could do was shudder, a frightened American medic
who Nazi soldiers had surrounded.
The next day, anger’s black and barren
tree spread its roots while rage’s ravens
circled its branches. All that was left
to do was write about axes that were
like memories of her.. After death’s
soft shudder ran through her friend,
John’s hope and anger were specs of dust
floating in space. Life’s lamp ignites
when existence ends. Death’s shudder
will run through them both,
and rats will play dice with their bones,
but life’s lamp should kindle before that.
—
The Washing Machine
The cycle of life and death with women sometimes moved
as fast as a washing machine’s cylinder. Jake could never predict
when it would begin or end, but He hoped that Carla’s desire
as fast as a washing machine’s cylinder. Jake could never predict
when it would begin or end, but He hoped that Carla’s desire
to hurt him was just a star and not a bright and burning
constellation anymore, which reminded him that fate was a
half full bottle of Stella Artrois, and that the hope that remained
in his life after Pandora’s box had opened
was an untouched copy of a Herman Hesse novel lying in
the middle of Berlin after the Russians had defeated the Germans.
On Wednesday, His need for a girlfriend was a beeping
dishwasher full of clean dishes that he couldn’t
turn off, and His hope of finding a girlfriend was a single krill
swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and a Blue Whale’s
opening mouth was approaching. Still, he kept trying,
and the dishwasher eventually stopped beeping; His hopes
with women were now a small krill that escaped
the Blue Whale’s mouth and kept swimming. On Friday, Justine’s
kind lies reminded him that women were beautiful, and that
their presence was as fickle as a burning cigarette
ember. But, his friends were a futon that was bolted to a wooden floor.
The next day, He knew that he couldn’t talk to Dana until her boyfriend,
a surveillance camera, was gone, but her faults were small
specs of white paint on a red canvas compared to her good
aspects, which were Picasso’s Red Armchair. When she ignored him
that night, his dejection towards women was a switchblade
that a murderer kept slowly pushing into his left arm. He was
hoping that a wonderful woman would pull it out
for a while, but Venus seemed to have abandoned him.
His optimism towards women was now a building that was
about to meet a wrecking ball; It would soon be specs of
concrete that would blow away and disappear. Still, his
fantasy of reconciling with Katherine
was an adrenaline shot given to a junky who had
overdosed, and He was a stick in the Mississippi
River when life handed him adversity and pain that was
beyond his control; He simply tolerated these
burdens and continued to float down the Mississippi’s
mud filled waters. Then, He tried to escape women,
but they still hunted him and beat him like U.S. Marshalls.
Yet, he also knew that he couldn’t escape them, or he
would have to escape life.
—
© Luke Skoza 2011
Luke Skoza is an senior English major at Southern Illinois University inCarbondale, and I won the 2009 Academy of American Poets Undergraduate Prize. Recentley published in the Silenced Press - http://silencedpress.com/poetry/paper-bowl/
