With a thick-cut slice
of buttered brown bread in hand,
I head out the door.
Traffic flows like a river
emptying to a dead sea.
(November 30, 2021)
-
My Hands
by
These are my mother’s hands:
wracked with worry, the veins
thick below the skin, soft
like worms in loam.
These are my mother’s hands:holding my face, stunned
that I am still alive
to walk through another day.
These are my mother’s hands:kneading the bread dough
for another Thanksgiving,
one more meal together.
These are my mother’s hands,empty like bones in the ground.
(November 28, 2021)
-
Presence
by
I breathe in this world.
A rose blooms in the backyard:
Today is today.
(November 26, 2021)
-
Reconciliation
by
Unintended, random like dice, or love
the stories fell into place, puzzle parts
as remembered, and retold as punch lines
to a deflected tragedy one night
late after almost all had departed.
You spoke into your anguish. I listened,
troubled in my failed attempt at reason,
for what you had said tore into my heart.
How can anyone know the genetic
strands of what we have said to each other?
where the safe world we have constructed shapes
us from the lies we have neatly explained
until the only truth we know is ours,
tangled in our hearts’ cold reliquaries.
(November 21, 2021)
-
Last Day’s Wait
He was dying slowly, and I
was impatient.
The bell, sewn on his pillow,called and called.
All afternoon as it rang,I would go to him.
He would whisper slurred words,as I leaned into his deaf ears.
What do you need? What can I do?Water? Do you want water?
He’d groan, his eyes lost
somewhere in the distance.
What do you need? What do you want?As if I did not know.
(November 18, 2021) -
My Grandson Asks My Son
thanks to They Might Be Giants
“What’s a soul,
and how do you build a bird house
in it?”
My soul ached then,as he built a space
larger than the sky:
the bluest wonder widenedwithin, opening his nascent world
to dawn’s infinite chorus,
and I rose with the songto a dance
I had thought forgotten.
When did I lose such trustin the fragile
feathers of love?
(November 14, 2021) -
It’s Not Cold; It’s Nothing
by
I look out and see the sun;
I feel no warmth.
I do not want to be here,but I have nowhere else to go.
I would say I’m unhappy,but that implies happiness
existed as a measureto gauge an amount of rain.
If I listed all my faults,I’d have something to do.
Today was much like yesterday:hot, dry, and lonely;
The sun slowly shimmersthe surface of the lake, like ice.
(November 11, 2021)
-
A Problem with Narrative Poetry
You begin with some mundane action,
which is not so mundane, of course,
as the poem progresses casually,
like a suburban park’s path,
along an implied narrative’s arc.
Then some fragile moment occurs—perhaps a squirrel who, startled, stops
mid-path to stare for an instant,
it’s dark eyes questioning your life
before fleeing into the nearby brush.
Then you turn on an epiphany; and,rising above the path and squirrel
like a Pentecostal dove on fire,
you signal your transcendent virtue
to all those who pause to understand.
So, the poem comes to a cliched closesoftly condescending so as to not
offend any who might see themselves
mocked behind any veiled smirks
or metaphor they might find here.
(November 7, 2021)
-
I had a poem Published.
by
I had a poem, Identity, in the second issue of Acropolis Journal. It was part of my collaborative project with my sister, a visual artist. I wrote a poem using each card of the tarot as a palimpsest, and she illustrated the major arcana. Here is a link to Acropolis Journal.
https://acropolisjournaluk.wixsite.com/acropolisjournal/kelly-neal-identity
-
Net Worth
Like raw clay upon a wheel,
I twist decades’ old regrets
to shape my truth with desire
to be some other than I am.
As if life’s embarrassment
could be stripped away, like skin
cut loose in great bloody skeins,
free from doubt’s infinite knots:
Tangled in old fishing lines,
I am trapped within myself.
The only recourse is guilt
inlaid along my arms’ veins
like intricate red nets flung
across a river’s slow wash.
(November 4, 2021)
-
The Function of Memory
(four haiku and a tanka couplet refrain)
The flames slip across
the old wood in the fire pit.
I think of you.
My life trails behindbefore I step into it.
I’ve been here before.
I am always here.Today, I lost who I am:
I tripped on a root.
I see who you werewhen I fell in love with you.
Forty years slip past.
A mountain is a mountain;a river flows to the sea.
(October 31, 2021)
-
Will the Answer be Worth the Question
For several days, I don’t write at all,then start to worry I won’t write again.
Not that it matters to anyone else,
except me and the niggling voice within.
I know, time to think will quiet the voice
which fills the silence like an open wound;
for Time’s a negligent god, not caring
if I pick up any of the dry bones
she casually drops as talismans
on this twilight path I long to travel.
So, I tear out my heart as sacrifice
to the twisted beast who is my other:
will it satisfy this constant hunger,
and let grace fall on me like winter rain?
-
You Find a Poem You Wrote Years Ago
by
It’s like seeing old pictures of yourself
long after the camera’s cold click. You
have a sense of familiarity,
a recognition that you were once there
in that moment, but not of the moment
before, or after. The lines have taken
on depth as their specificity blurred,
the colors clarity fading through time
into generalized gestures, and
you stop short, stunned at your oblivious youth,
the clear lack of fear, the unacknowledged
audacity that spoke with more wisdom
then, than you ever knew you had, and have
since lost like someone waking from a dream.
(October 21, 2021)
-
Self-Portrait
by
This is me:
laconically bored
sitting in the stands
watching from above.
This is me:focused on the moment
tracing a rune
across the killing floor.
This is not a mirror,a simple reflection,
rather, a dissection,
a slow flay, where
skin peels offin thin sheets until
only raw red bits
of sin cling to bone.
I am a myriad,shattered.
I am a scar,
angry and raw.
(October 14, 2021)
