out
of
it
p a g e t w o
copyright1999-2001, Christine Hamm
fetish
The shoes, the shoes are safe to look at, not the faces. I envy many of the shoes, the feet with their glossy brown toenail polish, perfectly and symmetrically arched toes and the tiniest wink of the silver toe ring. Most of the shoes are black.
I love reading over people's shoulder's in the subway. It makes me feel close to a stranger -- for that brief moment we're in synch, having the same thoughts, reading the same words.
through the window
A child is being attacked by dogs.
The child's dress has huge pink and blue flowers.
One of the dogs is a German Shepard.
His bark has a slightly different resonance.
The fourteen year-old girls in my neighborhood never smile. Brown hearts are lipsticked into the moons of their faces. They wear high-heeled sneakers and stiff blue jeans that brush the sidewalk with a dull whisper. They carry the air of just after dinner around them. Their voices have the even tone and the silences of the talk-radio in the next apartment. They are serious and their hair is in ringlets wound round fingers. They are like soliders, smoking before the battle of their lives.
Things Break,
the subway poster reads. Cracked glass overlaying the words. A sticky death. Whitish coffee spilled down subway stairs. The smell of shoe polish and hair spray. Wet wool from snow melting on the shoulders of old coats. Faces, waxen, turned away. Bodies stiff so as not to bump. The fingers are pale, gripping. Bloodless. Silence.
Dream Cats*
My cats hate electricity.
They are scabby, fetid, dark.
They nose the alarm clock off the dresser.
They unplug the TV, the fan, the microwave.
They circle me in the dark,
teeth shining like
the memory of that night
the one I turn the lights on
trying to forget.
*published in Poetry Midwest