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oranges! oranges! on a green tree and the blue
Mediterranean is all you see…& lizards! loving
in the olive grove, fresh figs at the table,
sweet & mauve,
a rustle of white, at a window so ---
no. actually.
this is new jersey the garden state and you are late.
& your mother, bless her fading prickly soul,
is quite alive. She’s in the spare bedroom
your old bedroom, actually, that dusty, 2 hours of morning sun, then shadow-room
decorated box bedroom, picking at the wallpaper -
green apples pink roses pink apples green roses apples roses
oh. god.
the fury of her dry silences so tiny
as she waits for prunes
& color-coded medication
oranges oranges on a blue tree
& the black Mediterranean
is all
artist Cheryl Townsend
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One year sober
and no one noticed
nor cared
nor thought much
about it,
not even me.
Bills are still due,
boils and abscesses
have been replaced
by a gut and a grudge,
and a binge
hovers over me
like flies on another
fuck-less night.
Can't wait for year two.
What a fucking party
That'll be.
At least the flies will still be there.
It'll give me something to kill
other than myself.
So while I sit around and wait
for that magnificent benchmark
to arrive
I'll keep writing these
dead poems
no one will read
nor care about
nor think about,
not even me.
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Born & raised in NY, educated in Boston, Deirdre called on a flurry
of places, from Berkeley to Marrakesh before she finally landed in BC.
She lives there still, near a forest, by a river with her family &
critters & continues her practice of writing.
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Steven Hoadley has been published in various literary and non-literary
magazines, zines, e-zines, walls, fences, and whatever else he can find
to scratch out and leave behind a reminder of his existence. He has two
short stories in the current issue of 'The Exquisite Corpse,' and
another one can be found in 'While You Were Sleeping Magazine,' better
known as WYWS. It can be purchased in Borders Books and Tower Record
Superstores, nation-wide.
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