Experimental Lexical Accretion:
Who grew up bent over a chess board?
Why you did as you pondered your neighbor
undressing her crimson self across your window.
Who grew up so poor they had to take the place of bait in a mouse trap?
It was Lindsay who always sat across from us at the cafeteria,
her sweater covered in sauce as if she painted it on herself.
Who began to grieve for awkwardness and ignorance?
The cop that stopped your sister, he never knew what was coming
as her pale lips whispered nothing before her eyes rolled back for the last time.
Who looks for something that’s been there every day of your life?
Her grandmother, always searching, searching for the bottle caps,
the linen, and the eyes of her cats as if they could bring everything back.
Who went to the Irish Pub in New Orleans, Louisiana?
Why I believe we did as we drank the bourbon of our youth away,
saturating in the coastal swagger, the bitter tides of questions with no answers.
Wonderful local detail, here. "coastal swagger," "undressing her crimson self."
ReplyDeletePerhaps now you can ditch the machinery of the question and answer and allow some of these characters more space than they are allowed here?