The Titanic & the Iceberg
We share, in a way,
a capsule of immiscible
love.
I have not the sort
of bones
one takes home to
the table
for Christmas Dinner.
To meet the meat
of stampeding hooves
dialing in judgment
from a touch-tone phone.
“She has only one
leg?” Aghast. Gassed.
Out of kindness,
curtain silence falls.
I drink pity for
breakfast
and vomit its remains
with will.
Drop my single foot
as a stick in the ground--
drive it hard to
stake a tent of grace,
which vacillates
from weak to worse.
I have stacks of
stories, all horrific:
they’ve grafted
and drafted and whittled my limbs
until there is barely
room for another knife.
What lies beneath
these leather scars
are daisies crushed,
sand dollar dreams
and the chalk of
fury lathered
by the wild call
of proving my worth.
Tender bubbles beneath
my skin
have not been touched,
because.
I’ve been tripped,
duped, tied
by stares and stairs.
I climb them, when
I can,
in the darkness
of backs turned,
so my limp is leveled
by the
pageant of their
silk ballet.
Bubbles proceed
to fly, but
only where it is
safe
and that is in your
arms.
Ours is not greeting
card love--
with stickers of
poise on ballroom floors.
But a smacking,
sacred kind:
dodging the sting
of defeat;
two hummingbirds
tapping out sweet spots
of plain brown-wrapper
tragic times.
by Janet I. Buck
poem. The thing that occurred to me when I read your poem is:
"This is Love that has Legs!" I am pleased to award you
the first prize of $50.00 for submitting the BEST poem I
received out of well over 500 poems! Your poem really
pierced my heart!
Sincerely,
Anne Bryant-Hamon
Janet Buck Reading at the Club Mesa
