Blow by blow, we gave up scents and sunsets
to hold our heads in a screen and gawk
in our sleep—My blind leading your blind
to where the last light is driven
to be warehoused.  I learned to whisper
over graves to measure the heft
of my breath next to the soul that lay
in that soil, devoid of breath.  When push
comes to shove—When enough is more
than enough.  When your face
sees itself snatched by the swarm
of names—Pell-mell.  I’m just parched
for a whiff of clean laundry, a bed made
from the cheapest smoky scents
of its last spent residents—Clinging to
pastures where the lovesick stargazers go.
Yesterday, I mourned a friend
Who I’ve never laid eyes on.
Never heard the bricks in her voice,
or saw her mouth, a gaudy brothel
of accents, straight out of the Bronx,
by way of Chicago—My birth town,
I was born to know that train whistles
record the distance of our loneliness.
I drifted to sleep smelling
the pepper-spray my parents
shot at each other in the front seat.
It was my own garden on the highway,
under the Magikist Sign where
I could cry all night long in the damp
arms of strangers—Each car holding
that piece of self that looks for others.
Popping out of a hole, like a fox
or a wolf, forcing you to see your breath,
flick the light switch into the dark
class room in the planetarium of stars.

This is egregious, the mind’s parlor is being wooed

before breakfast—Even before hitting the sticky

gymnasium floor.   The keys to your ethos

held accountable in a drowning pool

of munitions.  Swerving on the slickest road like mood

hoodlums on the lamb.  As if offered a cigarette on

the front lines— to come back and report on

the internal conflict.  Yes, every day is triage.  

You are the wedge between East and West.

You are someone else’s war chest.   The pharmacist’s

widow sanctioned pills like beads in a rosary.

Every day, you are a cloud held-up

by tooth-picks.   Battle weary and boot-legged

to the nth—Your body’s cavities hold crimpled labels,

implying you have filled out many papers and forms. 

You’ve crossed boundary lines, while red sirens

Howl with the medicinal dogs.  On two feet, you landed

here—A cotton-knoll down a lane of pretend,

that flushed moment when as a kid

you learned how to swallow and let go.

                                                                  --Cynthia  Atkins

It is the thing we always fail

to mention on all the forms—

the despotic voices dancing off

the charts, and on the trail

of our acrid ancestors, haphazard

and lorn, sniffing us out like cadaver dogs.

Our chromosomes flirting  

on the cordless phone—Deceases of the heart

and kidney are just the body’s bric-a-brac.

Incorporeal or obscene?  We are the doctor’s worst

unexplained nightmare. And we never speak

of the Endocrine glands—Unsavory

secretions passed down like the heirloom

nobody even wants.  We are a Rogue nation.

No country or comfort zone.  Inhospitable bedrooms,

where our parents detonated bombs, blamed

the groping in-laws. Our family trait is to remember

only the good times, like a last blown kiss

at the door—But more like a breath

blown over a bottle, forever haunting

the offspring.  Hush, we’ll never tell,

yet deep down we know, the mind’s pain

is the last inconsolable and extra gene.

Rabid dog in the school yard—

Mean and mad and frothing.