Double-Spacing Curiosity
by Andrea DeAngelis
i
what does it mean to really breathe?
bare thought flushes
the scars of ruined roads
we’re forever on a car trip
telephone poles are odd crosses
connected electrical writhing
don’t touch
the metal door handles
remember that game?
while holding breath patterns
and passing the mystery dead
huddling within cemetery hills
but you’re no longer the same
ii
younger brother flatters classmates
by also banging his head on the desk
but even he will contest
an epileptic’s involuntary disarming,
the nun-in-training he found charming
her parents coerced her towards the convent
to force-feed their contortionist calling
to do something with an imperfect daughter
who wouldn’t be done with
my mind’s askew framed in vertigo depression
despite wishing slides into damp leaf piles
explosive, unafraid of ticks
this is what I wish
a childhood possession to be
for my brother and me
but two peas in a pod
cannot even speak kindness
in our adult distancing.
Grays of Memory
the brolly of your brainchild
is communicating
despite a physical impediment of the tongue
that disappears with nervous yesses
if you always say yes
no one will hear you say no
you are surviving
an inner dialogue of rejection
derived from your best efforts
and your best friend’s dilapidated ego
shored up as a lean-to
constructed by a reluctant Brownie
in spider infested woods you filled
cups of squatting arachnids
stolen away from home invasions
you couldn’t kill them
they frightened you too much
even though wolf spiders
are descendants from monsters
they are monsters on your side
and I think
this is the childhood I hoped to forget
because then the contrast would be greater
this picture inexact reparations
of my expansive hate.
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ANDREA DeANGELIS is a poet, writer and musician living in NYC. She has unresolved trauma with an unfortunate mullet that scarred the beginning of her adolescence. The recurring nightmares at her grandmother’s born-again hairdresser are particularly potent. Snip. Snip. Recently, Andrea’s work has been published in The Kakofonie, Monkeybicycle, Frostwriting and Dogmatika. |
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