Panleukopenia

Posted on July 21, 2018 by Elea Lee

You do load after load of laundry, grateful for the workhorse machine from a low-tech era and the hot Texas sun–ad hoc laundry assistant

You drag the oriental rug outside, wash it like a corpse before burial, ask if it can be saved

You scrub fabric, bleaching where you can, trying to wash out a virus which will not, does not, abate.

Push aside the agony of why you have to do all this. Walk this road. Pray for the resurrection of the dead and the impossible watercolors of heaven

Our Father

Who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

Here in us, as it is in heaven.

This call is coming to you from a correctional facility

Posted on July 3, 2018 by Elea Lee

Adopted mom–denizen of the ordinary. Ordinary tea, ordinary clothes, ordinary mulch, overgrown flower beds. Scans the sky for rain. Rattles around in the-used-to-be marveling at how things have not turned out as expected.

Measuring Time in a Teacup

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Elea Lee

Nondescript kitchen window transforms itself into stained glass as I overthink which teacup, settle on porcelain white so different from the non-Euclidean trees green, alive, and fierce in this hot summer wind

I drop

two bags into the single cup, pour water from the kettle, assess how full the tea tin used to be

Last time we were alive

Together.

6 Minutes to Ballinger

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Elea Lee

6 minutes to Ballinger, Texas I missed you. Not possessing the ability to stop all the clocks, I watched windmills instead, recording the flat, hot, windy stretch of road while the Catholic radio station came in so clear with words of uneven comfort. I picture you a Ghibli bride, birdcage veil like Jackie Kennedy, always dainty, smallest, sweetest bouquet of flowers held between your front two paws as you proceed toward our mutual Savior, unswerving in his gaze.

The Flood

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Elea Lee

…and he turns loose the South Wind…drenched wings, night-black armor where face should have been…

–Ovid

Saw you once

In the photo booth of grief

Just before the Flood.

Writing with Invisible Ink

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Elea Lee

Now that I have seen the diamondback rattler in the domain of children I see him again everywhere–the darkness notched between sidings and foundations, lassoed water hoses resting in the sun, tree branches in the grass, all become the skin and flesh and memory of the foolish man who held just the severed head of his deadly foe too close to human skin.

We keep the most dangerous pets coiled in emptied potato salad containers, hastily labeled with words too awful to write down in anything but

Invisible ink.

Ghost Child

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Elea Lee

To be clear you are all grown up now and living somewhere as I try yet again to excise what you have done to us all from pictures of beautiful children.

You were

You are a dangerous male child

But what you will be

Is mountains told to throw themselves

Into the Sea.

Mark 11:22-23 NIV

[22] “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. [23] “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.

Apophenia

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Elea Lee

I pull the elephant ears out of the water, one and then a handful and then none for awhile, risking dead fish and live snakes to find you. At dinner the little boy asks what miscarriage is and my answer is accurate but brief because why tell a little boy about lost siblings and the trees grown in their place or the way that forgetting is not better than carrying this

This memory of you dark, indelible angel, in the midst of all I hold dear.

Beanie Weather

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Elea Lee

The young fella folding library mailers eyes the old ladies as they cross the light-filled atrium. They are an exclamation point and a question mark traveling at processional speeds, arms entwined for mutual ballast. I take my own child’s arm, tell her that if we play our cards right one day they will be us, we will be them…while the young fella wears a reddish “cadet” tee and a off-grey beanie in the late days of May in the heart of Texas–bit warm for beanies, she says.

Better to catch the eye of all the pretty girls, I tell her on the way home.

Traveling Fast on a Spinning Planet

Posted on May 28, 2018 by Elea Lee

So young to be caught in a prisoner’s dilemma they give me vaguely concocted descriptions of a car we all know is fiction to cover for what we all know is true.

Take note of how young they are, intrinsically lovable despite their wanton ways. Can I will them to safety, to slow down for all of us–still alive, for now

Give the young bullet-fast toys; hope they survive

Hope we all survive while the 911 dispatcher asks–“yes, but what is your emergency ?”

Wanna quote Flannery O’–the life you save may be your own.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: Poetry