Category: Poetry

a poem: snakes on the deck

Audra Edmonson2 Comments

Sometimes I’m tempted to get angry that I have to stand here and teach English. I want to rage and rail and list my complaints neatly in ordered, alphabetized lines.
But I don’t let myself ever get angry. Not really truly deeply angry. I chose this life. I think I have no right to get angry that I chose it.
Choose something else, is the obvious answer. And yet I don’t. So fear is there. And laziness. The status quo. Inertia. A body at one job remains at one job unless acted upon by unemployment or very great determination. Workers first law.
I rage in silence at myself in the end. Why are you standing there teaching English? Layabout.

(Part 2, sometime later)

I am angry now. I have pulled up a great column
Of anger in my chest and am heaving it out, coil by coil,
Like a great slippery snake
Like a heavy rope on a ship
To coil and coil without end.
The deck is full of the slips and strains of it.
I am angry.
Angry that I feel beholden to something
I should not.
This life is toxic. It is destroying my body.
Why have I not left.
Why do I feel this guilt.
Why has this place given me such guilt that I can’t even walk away when it no longer serves me nor helps me nor is even safe for me.
Were I at home I wouldn’t hesitate.
No, just here.
I am rotting.
A carcass for carrion birds to find and harvest.
I will leave the shell behind and journey home.
The soul bright and untainted.
The long, long journey back to it.

-a.e

a poem: bare

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(Written in Korea, midwinter)

I usually walk with headphones
To block out the world
But wearing earmuffs makes it hard
Anyway today I walked in silence
Muffled a bit all the same
But I heard the coldest sound on earth
Dead leaves
Leftovers of Autumn
Blowing in the wind across stone
Skittering
Beetle-like
But more romantic than beetles.
I saw the trees reaching naked into the sky,
Bare bones black bark
Bleary leering as I walked
Against the wind, earmuffed, masked, scarfed, coated,
A pad of heat against my back
Barely enough for biting weather
Barely enough for biting illness
Barely covering

-a.e

a poem: cornflower

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Noticing the blue sky above your head
Dotted with puffs of white cloud
Is very cliche
But I did it anyway
And had a revelation
That cliches may be cliche
But what makes them bad?
I saw the blue sky
I saw the clouds
I saw all the way to heaven
More or less
I saw that around the sun the sky was bleached blue,
Pale blue
And pale blue
Around the horizon
But upwards above me, and for some reason
In a spot away to my right,
It was a deeper blue
So blue, like what the crayola people call
Cornflower blue
And it nearly struck me speechless
I wish I had been alone to just look
Forever into cornflower blue
Instead I looked down
And felt the wind on my face
And saw the weeds coming up
Under my mother’s hands
And into the big green trash bin.
Life is amazing.

-a.e

a poem: burn scars

Audra Edmonson5 Comments

If you have a burn scar
No one asks why you’re afraid of fire
No one asks why you shy away
Why you’re careful
Why even a candle can be
Terrifying
I have been burned by love
So even a small consideration
A small touch
A small notice
Is terrifying
Objectively
(How we overuse that word)
Burn victims know all fire is not bad
Fire gives warmth
Energy
Cleansing
Love victims know love gives too
Comfort
Support
Otherness nearby
Twin toothbrushes
But just as that burn victim needs time
So we need time
Not more fish in the ocean talk
Not you haven’t met the right one talk
Not get over it talk
Just time
Just practice
Just more small candles
That do not burn
A candle that reaches out
To caress
To chase gently
Oh so gently
To fish me out of the crevice where I
Hide licking my
Wounds
I have been burned
But you don’t see my scars
So to you
They are invisible
Like children playing tag
Hiding their eyes
So they don’t see you
You don’t see them
Same you turn from me
Refusing to see my scars
Well love is like that
Love can be the best thing
In the whole world
Or it can leave us in the ICU
Skin flayed wrinkled parched dying sloughing off
Until we are unrecognizable
My heart is so
Treat me gently
But find me a lover anyway
I am freezing for fear of fire

-a.e

a poem: my personal gravity well

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(written just after I decided to leave Korea)

I sit in bed and type.
Typing is different than writing.
And I don’t write much.
Mostly planning.
Making words pretty.
Like that will make them more
Real.
Make my lists fancy.
And they will get done.
Make my dreams sparkle.
And they will come true.
I add a sticker
Here
And
There, just there.
It means I am trying to
Put my mark on it.
Make it, bend it into
Reality.
But reality bends us.
Right?
Or do we bend it when we move?
When we dream, do the stars tremble
In their courses?

Dreaming must be dangerous then
To move galaxies and bend solar systems
Into our own making.
We move, we bend time and space,
And the universe heaves
Infinitesimally.
But it moves. Every breath a great
Wind birthed.
Every flutter of fingers
A small gravity ripple.
Making waves in our own personal
Systems.
What manner of magic is that?

What manner of creature am I
To sit in bed and type,
When soon I am planning
To quit my job.
Leave this country.
And go home.
Because my body is breaking.
And I don’t know how to fix it.
How to fix my cage.
The bird inside is fine,
Thanks very much.
It’s just this shabby old
Ill-treated cage rusting and falling apart.
Squawking in the night.
Hinges snapping.
The caged bird sings.
Angry.
Defiant.
Raging against the cage that breaks.
Wishing others could see inside the cage.
But they only see
The breaks.

-a.e