Truth and Other Lies
By Donna Thomas
His rustling awakens me
tiny claws
scratching the skin of sleep.
That is not true.
I heard my father's clock strike two
and I peered through closed eyes
into the past and waited.
Silently now, I slip bent feet
into fake fur
lean against my broom
then move from room to room.
Tonight, 1 know,
he is crouched on the counter
teeth tearing
at the oatmeal box that I forgot
to seal in the safety of the refrigerator.
That is not true either. I left it there
on purpose
bait for a trap without wire.
I blaze the kitchen with sudden light.
He leaps but does not run
in his usual zigzag manner.
He is a stubborn old man
gray, tipped with white,
one hind leg twisted like a broken spring.
I nudge him with straw
carefully across the cracked linoleum.
He will not speak pain.
With a leaf I lift from the table
I pen him in the corner.
Really it is an old board I use.
I dragged it down from the attic yesterday
my breath rising in my throat like bubbles.
I can't remember why.
Years and years of scrubbing away
black droppings
and shreds of rag
have withered my fingers, and they ache.
"I should pour boiling water
on your head," I mutter
and light the fire under the kettle.
It whistles a tuneless dirge.
I warm my tongue
on the bitter edge of tea.
Shall I break the bag
tell his fortune from pattems heaped
in a chipped saucer?
Ellis would have grabbed a poker
smashed him skull
into a flat smear
then twirled him by the tail.
I stretch my legs
scrawny limbs with bones as brittle
as a rat's neck.
If I were to remove my slippers
only the cold would nip my toes.
The question, now, is of his disposal.
I have passed beyond blood lust.
Shall it be poison, quick and kind?
I imagine myself arranging his whiskers
into a perpetual twitch
combing his soft fur into a rug
that Belinda would arrange
and rearrange
in the house of her dolls.
I am old fool telling lies.
Belinda died
and her daughter's daughter comes
every Tuesday
to drive me to the grocery store.
If he would just squeak animal despair
or outrage
I could sweep him onto the ice-glazed yard.
There is a piece of carpet on the top step
crumpled as an old blanket.
But he simply crawls
dragging his useless leg behind him
seeking a tunnel of darkness.
We are both old fools
for we, alone, have chosen to survive
in this drafty house
where the ghosts of his children
ever snap shut
and my child cries
while our father eternally tinkers
with time.
If I could remember where I put the sugar
I would scatter it like sweet sweet snow
into the triangular cage
of his last supper.
2nd place, National Federation
of State Poetry Societies Award 1991
published NFSPS Prize Winning Poems 1991
© 1991 copyright Donna Thomas
A Collection of Pottery
Steins
By Donna Thomas
Upon the shelf above my
head, fat monks
convene, eyes glazed, brown robes secured by lengths
of rope as white as salt. Their merry cheeks
are red. They whisper secrets, each to each,
of fire and earth.
At night they lean as one
upon their sandaled feet and catch the small
vibrations from the a wall that trembles when
the great clock groans of time. With tiny steps
they move across the shelf, revolve, regroup,
and sometimes with the chime, they hop or skip
a dance as tipsy as a smile.
Just once
I found the oldest one face down and sound
asleep, the others circled at his head.
The morning sun made halos round his bed.
I heard him snore.
He was not chipped nor cracked.
With careful hands, I lined those monks upon
the narrow shelf like soldiers on parade.
I froze them with my sober eye and called
down centuries of vows and disallowed
excess of any kind.
They held my words
in folded hands. Good cheer and pious prayer
fermented in the air. I drank and knew
in darkness time must moan, and monks of clay
shall find a way to move themselves about
and fill themselves, at will, with holy wine.
lst place, Florida State
Poets Award 1995
published, Anthology Fourteen
Florida State Poets Assoc., Inc., 1996
© 1995 Copyright Donna Thomas
We
By Donna Thomas
we know
the black-eyed butterfly
is blind
and grieve
the sharp-beaked song
of hunger
terror
is a scarlet rose
snapped by the wind
the blade
the poet holds
has no handle
1st place, Kindred Spirits
Poetry Contest
published The Kindred Spirit, October 1, 1985
© 1985 copyright Donna Thomas
Attention Kmart Shoppers
By Donna Thomas
We have a small boy here
at the service desk
whose parents seem to be lost.
He last saw them
wheeling a half-empty cart
toward the flashing blue light.
He says his name is William
and he has orange pants
and a red bike in lay-away.
He knows he lives on Elm Street.
His mother said she was going to buy
fitted sheets for his brand new bed.
Will Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Spires
please report to the service desk.
William is getting quite concerned.
And in his tiny hand he holds
a little cash
and all your credit cards.
published Anthology Ten,
Florida State Poets Assoc., Inc. 1992
© 1992 copyright Donna Thomas
No Marriage of True Minds
This
By Donna Thomas
Sammy with a gray sestina
curled in his pocket
like a sleeping fox
tolerates my crippled villanelle
forgives my free verse
and says he doesn't mind
those little songs that invent themselves
without a rhyme.
Sammy loves me more than sonnets
or a perfect ballad form
but sometimes I think when Sammy's alone
he fingers the fox
deep in his pocket and dreams
of Elizabeth Barret Browning.
published, The Kindred
Spirit, October 1, 1985
© 1985 copyright Donna Thomas
About the poet. . .
Donna Thomas was born
in Hammond, Indiana in 1934
into a family of school teachers and farmers. She grew up believing
that the written word was a treasure and that the vision of bountiful
harvest was a necessary dream. With such roots she was destined for
poetry.
In 1964 she, her psychologist husband, and their four children moved
to Sebring, Florida.
Upon retirement, she and her husband moved to five acres, mostly untended,
in the country, not far from town, where they co-exist quite peaceably
with creatures that crawl, creep, hop, scurry, fly, and slink about
in the night.
Thomas is a frequent winner in national and state poetry contests.
Some of the publications in which her work has appeared are California
Quarterly, Kindred Spirits, Pasque Petals, South Florida Poetry Review,
HWUP and Sijo West.
She has presented poetry workshops at conventions of the Florida State
Poets Association,
as well as other writer's conferences, and participated in teachers'
training seminars concerning poetry in the classroom. Students and
their poetry rank high on Thomas's priority list. She is the current
Chairman for the Florida State Poets Association's Student Poetry
Contest, an event that draws approximately 3,000 entries from throughout
Florida. She will edit an anthology in which the prize-winning poems
will appear.
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