Cake

This week, we were assigned to write a poem where we discussed something we aren't supposed to or, we don't normally talk about.  Here is my poem:

Cake

There is the fake, rubbery skin body
suit of today against disproportioned

dolls.  There is the sitting outside the glass
window looking into the storefront at
 
angled mannequins standing insect-still.
Body, like an aluminum pitcher,

gone too full, sweating condensation like
a secret, indecipherable language. 

There are all the bodies we walk into
like nested Russian dolls and the darkness

one body feels void of its sister. There
is the dawn cold breath of miles spun back

and forth in a pool like a skein of thread;body knifing passage into lukewarm

water.  Eyes searching the black threaded floor for a trap door that opens like a split jaw.

There are the word clouds.  The rewriteabletext of the self, redefined daily. There

is the noise that singes at the day like static.

And there is the cake on the counter that grins
like a friend despite what you've heard.

Day 30: The Lost Closet

For today's poem, I had to write about an article of clothing.  There is nothing more haunting than the glassed in closet on display at The House of Happy Walls.  Charmian London had an incredible collection of clothing.  But, what's hanging in her closet are just a few of her hundreds of dresses and tiny shoes (she was a very small woman).  This draft is a small little pantoum that thinks about all of Charmian that is still hidden from our view.

Charmian’s Lost Closet

When we think of lost artifacts
it’s difficult not to imagine
the last scene in The Raiders of the Lost Arc
the warehouse of crated treasure.

It’s a difficult picture:
Charmian’s extensive wardrobe,
a warehouse of crated treasure
What’s on display, behind glass,

merely s few selection of her wardrobe
tiny shoes, their brocade stitched in hidden messages.
And on display, behind glass,
The exotic birds of her dresses. 

Tiny shoes tapping out a morse code
a coded diary not to be found until after her death
muted sequined birds tagged and crated
in a warehouse in Sacramento.