Minotaur

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Elea Lee

these stories we tell

of bartering children for the status quo

are older than the Minotaur

dark, iconic monster

who most resembles our complacency

As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own

we mutter, a sotto voce offering

To the god of what it would cost to save them all

He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser

With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial

He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety

Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted

Italian briefcase

pets his children and standard

Poodle

with the same idle indifference

Ignoring the growing sport

Of hunting children

In the labyrinthine

minds of men who have traded

The suffering of this human child

For their own eternal

Souls.

little girl gone

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Elea Lee

you search for a word for this kind of thing–

boat lost at sea

balloon gone untethered

the appropriation of breakup

…songs

we used to sing as lullabies

now ectoplasmic

only you are the ghost in your own

skin

house

grief

rolls this monster

wave over you

grief-stricken mama

trapped inside this Chinese box

feel the wounds born into

each wrist

howl, howl, howl

hours before dark

Poem

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Elea Lee

“Poem”

would be a

Beautiful name for a child

The kind of child

You must imagine with

Ringlet curls,

Head bent over a book

Or just the small legs dangling

From an open-armed tree

We forget that the word itself means

Create

Like fiction or the epic

Story of lost children

We created, engendered, if you will

Then destroyed

Through shear absence

Of imagination

The Real Girl

Posted on August 25, 2016 by Elea Lee

You always used to say I was not

Your “real mom”

And I say,

“Tropes!”

What you really need to study are tropes.

For instance–

all the insinuating places

Fairy godmothers turn up:

Mitigating curses
Magically changing the appearance of the most ordinary pumpkins
Mending what has torn and broken
Saving a girl from “steps” of one sort or the other

(…Or in your case just your own lost-girl soul)

Changing epithets into flowers
Or mirrors into enchanted doorways for the…

The forever, the divine, the set-free, the

Real girl you

Should recognize in the faces now of your own

Bewildered children.

(Wake up, sleeping beauty…wake up)

Berlin Heart

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Elea Lee

Only the best are chosen

to man this ship

Sinking

with its nuclear core

whether it is true or not

I picture the submarine, home in the deep

sea inexplicably punctuated by

Bits of blinking light

Windows, a wrap-around porch,

(entirely decorative) men

Tiny inside

Atoms knit of blood and bone

All the oceans of the world reduced

To a thimble full of water amidst the stars

This metal vessel,

This Berlin heart,

Resuscitate us, sinking fast

without You.

In Plain Sight

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Elea Lee

If tragedy is a long-shot and comedy is a close-up

Then what is the Facebook shot of a young mother slumped

Out cold over the body of her own

Wailing child

On a van

On the way

To the methadone clinic?

Among the Dead

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Elea Lee

just moments before the blast

There were only living

Breathing children, women, men including

one who knew the truth about the vest, the explosives

wrapped around the heart

of time about to turn

A wedding into a bouquet of broken

Body parts everywhere the survivors said

The ones who could still talk

remember the calamitous before and after

But few will acknowledge the lie at the heart

of the chest-wired-to-slaughter

-grim wedding of deadly injunctions-

You, child, whatever they promised you they had no

right to say these empty things

Imposters all scorch, blood, and bone

Before the implacable throne of the hereafter

The Speed of Darkness

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Elea Lee

you ask me these absolute questions–/No matter what? No matter what. /Or–What is the speed of darkness? /I look it up–either: /Darkness is just the complete absence of light ….so it travels at the speed of light /Or the more dire–As soon as the light is gone, darkness returns, so you could say that darkness travels faster than the speed of light /the light just a flicker in the doorway of the world /The darkness a cat ready to pounce /a sea of trouble, waiting just waiting for the light to tire or wander off /so that it (the darkness)

Can overwhelm, flood in,

Return.

The reunion of broken parts

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Elea Lee

you take it for granted–

All those exes and the whys

Algebra–the reunion of broken parts

When no one asks how they got

So broken

We must all search for that

Ancient mathematician

His ability to see how

To…

Piece us back together

Bone by bone

Until every x is solved

And every y has its

solution

Chinese Box

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Elea Lee

some stories hold

Such trauma

That in order to

Tell them

You have to use a Chinese box

What, you ask, is a Chinese box?

A Chinese box is a

Story

Within a story

Not to be confused with

Chinese handcuffs

(Which is a very different thing indeed)

For example:

Once there were some children who lived in an apartment with their (biological) mother and father. They did not always eat. Sometimes they were left alone. The father beat the mother.

The loss was unbearable, said their foster mother. The boy was mute. The girl was cagey.

So small. So damaged. So angry.

They called her bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.

Because there was only the one.

One room, one closet, one subterfuge, one million wrongs

In the circuits of his mind

He tells the story of the bad mommy, who was (he says) too much drama.

As she pieces together the past she neglects the symmetry of hearts, circles, and peanut butter sandwiches among the survivors

Because, as an ordinary prophet once said–every trauma has its own story…

Within these concentric

Chinese boxes.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: Poetry