Francine Witte
Home Shopping Late night, all alone. Amethyst twinkling from the TV set. The beautiful “o” of stones. I feel like an “o” myself, a zero, because 3 a.m. is when the world gets so quiet, you hear everything. The host is a piano of teeth and a candle of eyes. She says things like special value, very rare, and I’m thinking she doesn’t mean me. No, she is talking about the necklace. Every stone faceted, perfect. She flickers it under the camera lights and the amethyst looks like nightstars which takes me back to my own summer nights, on a blanket with some boyfriend or other, the smell of sweetgrass and his ropey, teenaged neck. His hands damp, a tremble of lust and even the sky wasn’t bigger than we were. I look back at the TV. I wonder if amethyst has a smell. ** This poem was first published at Unbroken Journal. ** Full The room looks empty with its doors swung open, its floors polished and bare. It’s the last place you were before you took yourself and left. All the furniture gone, all the paintings and carpets because you said they were yours. I was yours; I remember calling out after you, but you didn’t seem to hear. And even for all of this empty, you left so much behind, Your shadow on the wooden floor, no way to scrub it clean, your hand on the doorknob, soft aftersmudge of your fingers. I have dusted and rubbed and breathed my useless breath to puff what’s left of you gone. Every night, I come in from the other room, my clumped-up blanket in a corner where I sleep, and then I walk these floorboards. I try to walk new footsteps across them. I try everything I can to stamp you out. Last night I tried again. To fill this space with another man. He came with a fistful of flowers, his fingers fleshy and sure. He asked why I kept it so empty here, I don’t tell him you took all the furniture. I don’t tell him you took all my heart. I tell him instead how really full this room is. He set the flowers down on the floorboards. I thought they might move a bit of you aside. He brushed a strand of hair off my forehead and disappeared through the door, the door that for me, now, only opens one way. ** Definition The little boy asks his family what a lemon is. The mother, mostly apron, says oh I use it in my cooking. Also to sprinkle on fish. The father, who is rumpled like the evening paper, says, Ha! A lemon is the car your mother’s brother sold me. The boy’s older sister is mostly boydrunk and says she uses lemons to bleach freckles off her face and also to blonde up her hair. The boy then asks his grandmother what a lemon is. She is round-shouldered and puckerskinned. She only comes downstairs once a day now. Other times, she is in the attic, where she lives. A tiny window, a tinier view. She says the sun is a lemon. Sometimes a slice, sometimes a wedge. It fits different each day in the window. And each day a little less yellow than it was the day before. ** This poem was first published at Pedestal Review. ** Parking Lots are Where They Keep the Sheep Now After the cold stopped being cold. After we had to stop burning things. Burning anything. After we gave up our cars. After the sheep wandered into the town looking for food that wasn’t dry as hard pearls. After we tried to eat the sheep but cooking got too hot and we were not strong enough to pull apart their sinew. After we looked at one another eight billion times and said it’s you, no no, it’s you. After we didn’t even need the wool because we didn’t need sweaters and also we could cut off our own hair to knit them with if that were ever to happen. After we pushed the leftover car shells down to the dry patch where the lake used to be and left them to rust or die or whatever it is that cars do. After the sheep kept banging their noses against the window screens because maybe they thought we had coldness or food when we didn’t have either. After we roped them together and walked them down to the parking lots with the open storefronts that were gaping like mouths that can’t even scream anymore. After we left the sheep and never spoke of them again. After, even we, became after. ** This poem was first published at January Review. ** Where Did You Go? I went thin as pears, all sliced-up and see-through. I went halfway to happy. I went to a place where I don’t have to answer. I went sniff in the air. I went to the arms of another. I went bent as bones. I went to a job without a computer. Where I stand in a field and the sun wets my back. I went behind the numbers on a wristwatch. I went hundreds of miles from your eyes. I went all unmarriage and you cannot stop me. I went where your questions stop smack in the air and long before they can get to my ears. I went to before I even know you. That spot in the morning about to begin, that curl of a mouth turning into a smile, that moment a flower opens up like a hand. ** This poem was first published at Unbroken Journal. ** Lone Earring Found last night in my jewelry box. Cheap dangle of rhinestone. Clip on and just a bit of a pinch. I wore the pair of them that night we drove around and drove around, the two of us new and hungry for us. We found a quiet spot to park. The city all around us. The beep and roar of living cars and the island of us two in the middle. You kissed my earring right off that night, I would later joke. And later, you would say you found it on the mat, how you hung it on the rearview, attached it to your college tassel, and liked to watch it all sway as you drove along. You later told me how you liked how It shimmered the sun, the glassy stab of it that probably still hurt a little even after we were done. ** This poem was first published at Unbroken Journal. ** Francine Witte's newest book of flash fiction, Radio Water, has just been published by Roadside Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website at francinewitte.com |
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