Couplets

Couplets fall from your mouth
like loose change from my pockets
when I take my jeans off at night.
I walk to get a last drink of water
And your shirt hangs on the
Ladder-back chair,
You on the porch with a cigar
Sitting in your undershirt
in a rocker you built yourself
rhyming like breathing
making rhythms match
by re-working your heart beat
letting the pa-pum, pa-pum, fall
until the words spill out
in so soft a shower, I imagine
Dre’ and Aesop, and Atmosphere
leaninginhidingbehindthebushescreepingundertheporch
to find a rhyme to sample,
a word or rhythm that will light up airwaves for them
and fill the purse pockets.
Yet, you are here, haunting me,
mocking me with your presence
Me, all emotion, messy meter
You whisper in my ear late at night
I wake knowing news of
gatherings and opera houses,
elections and gallery openings,
rallies and famines and wars.

- Tamitha Curiel

(featured in the poetry forum 09.06.10)

Bird of Prey

You would like
to tether
me to a
stake in your front yard
so you may study my swoop¾
an intrepid feat
you are powerless
to match.
You would like to hold
the string
attached to a claw,
a beak,
a rib.
That would make me your flesh and
bone and feather
kite¾
A toy, not manufactured,
bought or sold.

You wonder why I hover,
circling you.
You scan your street for dead pets:
the pesky squirrel, the occasional opossum,
a flat cat in the street.

And only if . . .
If only,
you weren’t breathing
under the shade of
that tree
in your front yard,
I would pound down
into your beautiful face,
clean the clefts of your cheeks,
suck your spindly bones,
and stand in
awe
of our Maker.

- Tamitha Curiel

(featured in the poetry forum 06.04.10)

We love to dissect and study and cage and categorize. We say, "My, what a wonderful creation our God has made, just so we can admire His handy-work." What does the vulture say?

Woes of a Texas Teenager

It’s hot.
My mind escapes me.
My tongue runs laps around my desert mouth
My eyes squint back
seas of sweat.
My hand flaps
back
and
forth:
a skin and bone fan sorting molecules.

The small of my back
gathers water for small insects
to breed in.
The backs of my knees
collect the dust that pounds up with each plop of my flip flops.
My toes shrink back, like turtles
in their shells, trying to find the
shade of a shoe.

- Tamitha Curiel

(added 06.04.10)

The Chopper Trip to the House

She doesn’t have many memories of this.

One, actually.
Mostly bright.
Mostly with beads of sweat underneath a
Shiny, like night and stars-
Purple helmet that sat heavy on her head.

She sat in front of him,
Mostly afraid,
which was nothing new.

Hot wind,
The metal of something singeing her skin.

Black overpass,
The mirages of heat trapping her eyes.

Big city,
The structures of power teasing her trust.

His arms around her gripped the handlebars,
His foot went out as
The traffic halted,
Up so high for her,
He leaned and they rested there
silent among the cars,
Breathing in the poison of their pipes.

What did safety feel like?

This is how living was then.

Up high, heat everywhere, on two wheels, leaning, intimidation in the sky,
being poisoned but not knowing,
Looking out each way,
not recognizing the way home.

- Tamitha Curiel

(added 06.04.10)

Awk.

is a gray bird
flying over sloppy syntax,
pooping on my paper.

- Tamitha Curiel

(added 06.04.10)

Beowulf

I pulled up in a green continental
My son hopped out faster
Than expected
And leaned into the space where the garage had been.
Only now, where there used to be no entrance, only yellow siding,
Hung a screen.
And just that fast:
The plumbing and the wrench my uncle held in his hands
The gun in his face.
The owl I tossed pieces of balled hamburger meat, red and raw.
The manufacturing of goods.
The splitting of my chin on the chair
The raccoon I lay in the empty coop.
I watched him take his last breath.
I cried.
His fur soft, his breath fast,
His eyes, black, black, black.
Even though he killed my best chicken,
I cried.
The girl I didn’t know,
Bitten and bitten.
Oh, Jesus.
“Not that way,” I said.

And then we were in my old room,
except sun shining on parquet floors,
Not the old, clumpy orange shag,
A fish tank, huge and clean,
Fish like confetti.
On a fluffy white rug, my cousins.
Two boys.
I laughed. Couldn’t believe my ears:
One reciting poetry for me to guess.
Yes. I am the smart one, you say. I should know.
The only word that comes to me is Lund. Lund. Lund.
And the cousin laughs.
Lund is the right word.
But you want me to say Beowulf, you want the fight.

I am just so glad you’re here and not broken beneath the ground.
I’m sorry I hit you over a stupid football game and that you were spanked for
Busting my lip.
I cried then laughed at my swollen face in the mirror. Did you know?
And on the way home from that jail the last time, you said you believed.
And I believed you.

A few days later a branch would break you
wide open.
I had only read half the dream right.
I was in charge of the ride for just a bit.
I would have to go on without you.
We all would.

But here you are again, and
I want to read the dream right this time.
To keep you.

And I am crying because you want me to say Beowulf and all I can say is
Lund.

And now You.
There is a deep reservoir of things in me.
You expect me to know them all. because you do.
I have not even let myself dig
yet you come at me with a shovel
and a miner’s hat:
Light bearing down hard.
Instead of breaking ground
you hand me the tool.

Bust it open, you say
How wide? I ask.

I find the answer over and over
myself-
This last time,
New Year’s Eve,
on the floor of a friend’s bathroom,
My ribs bouncing off the tub
With silent sobs:

Wider, wider, wider.

- Tamitha Curiel

(featured in the poetry forum 03.05.10)