Taking Out the Trash

Summer heat has hit
curdling languishing laughter
into a relentless aura of inward hostility
Huffs and annoyed sighs between 
words shaved down to the bone
the vain sun's long gone
but the heat has seeped into the floorboards
like poison ivy creeping up dinner chairs
slipping in the pulsing veins on my neck
sucking all the love out of even My Little Pony
that yammers ebulliently on the TV screen
brittle patience cracks, sparks flying off my tips
one catches on a loaded grenade
fracturing the evening cool
let's hope as we take out the trash
the attitudes go too

amaryllis

CA

YWP Alumni

More by amaryllis

  • Forgotten altars

    You blink and look and stare
    and stare

    As if trying to find the snag in the dream
    the catch in the sweater
    the cards hidden up someone's sleeves

    The meaning of this miracle that tapped you on the elbow
  • You, Tree

    As I sit on this stump and read
    from these pages of your cousin's pulped flesh,
    I burst with the excitement of next year seeing you draped in color,

    You. master of graceful loss.

    You, vessels of wasted breaths,
  • spiraling

    Spiraling odes of love and loss,
    lost pages strewn on the desk and the floor and the eyes and the sky and my limbs,
    each one with a piece of myself I do not want to see anymore.

    what have I created?