Reaching for the razor blade,
she paused to listen to the incantations
of the crickets outside, then
glanced out the window
above the skyline of the city;
the clouds were obscuring the moon,
and it was about to rain.
Pity,
she said out loud,
then sliced open her cephalic vein
(screaming loudly, her eyes full of tears)
and watched twenty-three years
of rain clouds and pain
spill out onto Mother's
brand new
blue carpet.
Benjamin C. Krause's poetry is forthcoming in Tipton Poetry Journal, Counterexample Poetics, and Leaf Garden Press. He resides in Youngstown, OH and works as a software engineer, and in his spare time edits a literary blog called The Weekly Poet.
| I was
really unsure whether or not to submit this poem anywhere after writing
it, because I was sure the subject matter would mark me as one of those
awful amateur MySpace writers in a lot of people’s eyes. And when
it was accepted I panicked and contemplated asking that it not be
published at all. But I took a deep breath and showed it to a few good
friends who had decent poetic sensibilities, and they said it’s
nothing to be embarrassed of. It’s not, after all, the subject
matter that makes poetry good or bad, but how it’s expressed. |
