Skip to main content

Voice

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #219. 


Blow the story over me, the last one, the first one;
there's mustard and olive loaf sandwich left
and the day isn't as hot as it will be. 
Bless the day in Philadelphia when she moved,
before the ballet recital, after the record
when the wind was high as summer.
She'll always blaspheme Texas, it's the hell
that took her silk for denim, took her 
balance for kids and hurricanes.
Bless yourself when you sneeze, snotty thing
all I'm telling you, under fairy skirts,
what dance you're named after.
Bored on the grass of this new park? Think--
I could be famous, and you could be
meeting a queen of guitar screams.
Believe those come with tutu and crinoline?
Let me pull that fey illusion, quick,
don't leave bandages on belief too long.
Belly up to the table and lean close. Texas ain't
the good court. It's too scarlet prideful
and every string here shrieks.
But really--queens get to scream when they will.
Loud as you can, girl. Take these shades.
Tell'em who gave you them. Yell.

Spending the weekend hovering over a story and feeling as if sadness is the warm wind flying me too high to reach the page. It's not a specific thing...just a mid-summer slump that's sent me back to the pages of favorite books and new stories, in the mood for haunted houses to lure my own spooks out.

-- Chrissa

Comments

  1. Carrie BurttJuly 17, 2022 at 5:23 AM

    Writers must spread the word like condiments. This is a poem that speaks, whispers, and yells my friend. This Texas summer has been brutal, stay cool as best you can. I have a feeling my next light bill is going to be brutal too!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. qbitJuly 17, 2022 at 1:43 PM

    I really like this poem. "Blowing the story over me" like a much-needed breeze and spreading the ideas like seeds. And this: "Bless yourself when you sneeze, snotty thing" - fabulous.

    ReplyDelete
  3. FireblossomJuly 17, 2022 at 3:16 PM

    Maybe she will find a way to merge the two selves?

    ReplyDelete
  4. kaykualaJuly 17, 2022 at 9:57 PM

    It has been just as hot and just 'as brutal' over here in the tropics. Climate change is slowly showing its mark and it is not that welcomed. Beautiful write Chrissa!

    Hank

    ReplyDelete
  5. HelenJuly 18, 2022 at 2:12 PM

    Chrissa, this is outstanding. I honestly do not believe you are capable of 'slumping' ~ ever.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Susie ClevengerJuly 21, 2022 at 9:40 AM

    I love this whole poem." But really--queens get to scream when they will.
    Loud as you can, girl. Take these shades. Tell'em who gave you them. Yell." Your ending makes me permission to let go and yell. I so need to.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...
15 comments
Read more

The Soul and The Spine

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...
14 comments
Read more

A Single (Terrible) Poem

 I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies.    This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem?  -- Chrissa
11 comments
Read more