DeAnna Jones

CREATION

I have things to write about
but I’m choosing to sit here
with the UPS truck
outside in my driveway,
man in brown shorts,
muscled thighs,
black hair on his calves.
I don’t look at his face
right away.

I watch the quads,
the flex under his flesh,
thinking about the mechanics
of function and beauty,
the movement inside watches,
fuse boxes with their tiny
battery sized parts,
the inside of phone wires, cables,
blue and white, yellow and white,
my husband’s face
when he takes apart mother boards
or opens a set of Craftsman drill bits,
boxes of screws,
flat head nails, bolts,
gold and silver hooks.

I see a man walking towards me
made by something
that loves making,
loves the large strength of power,
fused together a machine
that can lay down a box
half the length of a grown man’s body,
smile a set of white wide teeth
and ask me to sign.

—from Rattle #21, Summer 2004

Confession of Icarus

They shook their silvered heads, strands whiter than
my sea foam splash and said that children can't
behave -- they never listen, do they? No.
The old may think I made mistakes there but

they underestimate the value of
a journey in all directions, of
the test over fear it takes to plunge and still
appreciate dimension's beauty best.

They judge the distance as it just fell short
in length, forgetting how without such depth
a human cannot live - how flatness kills
as sure as any precipitous fall.

I plummet, yet I will never look back,
embracing my last plunge to ocean black.

Squirrells

I used to sick on a large rock in my yard

and try to talk to all the squirrels.

I might have been a strange kid,

but I knew well enough that they could

not talk to me, at least not in verses of English.

I thought, however, I could tap into a bond

of deeper animal existence

that others did not know about 

because they shunned animal nature

as base and beneath them.

I thought that I because I was wild

that I could join into the collection of wilderness.

The same reason that humans shunned me

would work to summon them to me like men to sirens.

When it did not work, I persisted, still.

I sat on the rock and held my breath,

convinced it was my movement that kept them away,

that by offering up the breath that kept me alive,

I could via sacrifice be like trees they climbed

and they would welcome me too.

Nothing brought the squirrels to me.

I learned the cynical phrase,

"don't hold your breath,"

through severe realistic experience.

"can't hold a squirrel" is true too.

If I wished to be fast, to chase them,

but the use of force would ruin it.

I wouldn't have enjoyed contact

if it didn't validate what I felt:

squirrels and I were innately connected.

So I watched from afar

as the squirrels leaped through the grass,

pointing their noses this way and that

as they sniffed out acorns

and pulled them up with their tiny little claws.

As all sprouts do, I grew up 

and out of my childhood whims,

planted into adulthood, I

came to learn that squirrels and humans

were not the same. I am not

Still waiting to become one

with them but I still tend

a small place of belief that it could.

I breathe in shallow spikes,

sharp, like bursts of hope.

No Sleep

No sleep.
No sighs.
No simpered snores.
I need incentive to slide in bed,
wrap myself in sheets of dreams, technicolor.
If you would let me dream of you,
I would roll myself into the pastry flake fantasies
filled with my fairy wishes.
The black-blooded creatures of the night crawl out
hiding behind my bedpost, their little hands held to their hearts,
feeling the red light and pulse of their desire to be real,
for some gust of magic to sweep round them and turn them gold
But when I call your name and you don't come,
your absence chases them away like a cold breeze.
Bed time is a fine hour for fables
but only if the sheets are warm from you.

3 Minute Fiction Challenge

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door. Taking one last look around the small Manhattan apartment, Nadia thought about how she wouldn’t miss the clutter. Michael had so many books stuffed on the mahogany shelves that they looked like lobsters crawling over each other in a supermarket tank. All those books lay there, but somehow she had managed to pull out this photo album, probably the one thing he didn’t want her to look at. The sunlight coming in gave the little place a warm buttery feeling, but it also hit the multitudes of dust swarming the air. He never dusts, she thought. She laughed. After seeing the photo, not dusting was the least of Michael’s offenses. Well, she wasn’t going to be made victim by two men in a row.

The noise of the shower stopped. Uh-oh. Nadia had to move quickly. She couldn’t leave with him watching. She was sure of that but she was having trouble getting off the couch. It was one of those big puffy couches, the kind that swallows you when you sit and once you’re in it you never want to get out. Counting to three in her head, she pushed up from the couch, but only gathered enough momentum to get halfway up from the marshmallow cushions. Her rump technically didn’t even leave the seat before she plopped back down.

“Hey Nadia, can you remind me later that I need more shampoo?” Michael’s call echoed from the bathroom. Nadia froze. “Nadia?” He wandered to the bedroom door and looked at her. His hair was still dripping and he wore only his towel. She looked at the floor and cursed to herself. Go, go, go. She finally pushed herself up. “What’s wrong?” he asked. Nadia couldn’t look at him so she chucked the photo album at him and bolted. She descended the stairs, flew out the door, onto the street, down the subway entrance, and, swiping her metro card, put everything behind her. She stopped only when she reached the platform. For just a moment, she let her heavy breaths catch up with her. A teenage girl pointed at a man sprinting towards them, clinging to his towel so it wouldn’t fly from his waist, spraying those he passed with water.

“No,” Nadia moaned.

“Ew, gross.” The girl scrunched her nose.

Nadia covered her eyes. The train couldn’t come fast enough. Michael reached her and grabbed her arm with his free hand.

“Don’t touch me.” She slipped out of his wet grip.

“Nadia, what’s the matter with you?” More people were pointing and staring at Michael but he looked only at her.
“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? I saw the photo of you and cat woman on Halloween. What were you doing with another woman?”

Michael slapped his forehead. “That was two years ago. Before I even met you.”

Nadia shook her head. “You were dressed as the pirate king. That was this year.”

“I repeated the costume. I’m sorry Nadia. I wear the same costume every year. I’m not very clever, but I am faithful. I promise I did not cheat on you.”

Nadia looked at him dripping in the subway. A train arrived and all the passengers unloading stared at them. The wind rustled through the tunnel and he shivered but stayed looking at her. “Nadia?”

“Well, I feel silly,” she said.

A look of relief washed over Michael. He looked down at himself, then at her. “You feel silly?” he asked with a smile.

Saliva

When I saw the boy for the first time, I tripped so sharply that my organs lost their place. My heart took the place of my head, pumping constantly.
I told it to stop, but it wouldn't.
My head took the place of my stomach, digesting only thoughts of him.
I told it to stop, but it wouldn't.

I was dying.

The one who shook me up would be the one save me.
I needed a transfusion and I stole a kiss to get it.
A bite of the lip and the lifeblood pulsed from him to me.

But with the blood came a bug –
An illness of obsession, unshakable disease.
The sickness of needing to tell him how he made me feel.
I tried to make it stop, but I couldn’t.

I frothed at the mouth with words I had to say to him.
The sentences dripped and rolled down my chin.
Subject and predicate saliva.
He wiped my mouth with his sheet music, barely noticing.
I continued to foam as he played on and on, my requiem.

I tried to wash my face in the Raritan River,
Hoping its currents would carry away my illness.
But the current was not strong enough.
I stayed silently by his piano bench,
My chin nestled on his thigh as if I were a dog
I stained him with my drooling sentences
Maybe he would stop playing and notice?

I told the summer not to end
But the fall winds chopped at the season
The summer, the boy, my stomach and heart, we were all alike
We did not know how to obey

Nobody Too

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Nobody Too
By Dana Eckstein

You're nobody?
What a relief!
All these somebody's running around
Like I'm someone to be found
Are making me loose sleep!

I'm nobody, you say?
I wonder how you knew?
I hide disguised
so I am most surprised
but I am sure glad there are two!

A pair, a pair!
There is nothing better!
Like a sock with a companion
A mountain with a canyon
A creditor and a debtor!

The somebodies, my dear
I don't know how they do
With the dreariness and publicity
The feigned charm and felicity
All to impress the likes of me and you

The frogs, the frogs!
They ribbited and they jumped
How they stand not to die
Before the public eye
Leaves me just quite stumped

Now that we've two of us
We'll never have to part
Unless of course you know
You're sombodiness comes to show
Because then I'd have to dart!