"Magic To Be Found"

for Edward “I only really feel alive when I’m on the poem,” he tells me, ”the rest of the time I’m waiting to write.” I think about how words take over me, seduce me until I am a writhing puddle on the floor, people walking passed me indifferent to my pain. “I groan and hold my head, can feel them between my lungs,” he says. And I picture him sitting there tortured, with anguish dripping from his face, onto his chest, hand clutching the place where the words claw their way out. “The pen can’t move fast enough to take away the knife,” I tell him through wires and light, wondering if the blood on my blade is his. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by LitUp Magazine 4/08

"Things She Will Never Know"

You tell me about your affinity for Puerto Rican boys as I paint your face with makeup while your girlfriend is at work. Innocently, you speak of delicious caramel skin, eyes black as night, lips soft like pussy willows, and lean muscular shapes of bodies that you grip as you slide into them. Your eyes dash downward from mine telling me this. A half smile starts the flush rising into your delicate high cheekbones eliminating the need for blush. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Zygote in My Coffee Print #4

"Framed"

Your skin translucent and white, framed by ginger hair and meticulously placed bruises by fists of jealousy and rage. The fear gloves you as the dress is pulled over your head. His fingerprints the same color blue reflecting, intensifying, as you prepare to ring in the new year in the chill of this city night, with a smile intact across your lips like a lie too scandalous to be told. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Under Fathoms"

Sea spray streaks upward as the hull cuts the salt, whitecaps lapping the ship like a lover, and the lolling side to side is a lullaby, something left from childhood, bringing songs without words. The warmth of arms hem in tightly as two skins mutate into one; the singing rises higher and farther; the vibration of synchronized heartbeats, mine and the ocean’s, pulls me home under fathoms of dark green waters into the perpetual night of the sea. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Indentations"

The sharp cords of your neck muscles meet the collar bone making a divine indentation of flesh, a pool that could hold a thousand tears without spilling as it heaves with your breath, rapid and shallow, when the mark of my teeth trail my presence, and you are left with nothing more than wanting. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Wings of Icarus

"An Anchor Around Your Free Thoughts"

We walk hand in hand on the forest trail, I can feel your thoughts pulsating through your bony fingers, interlaced between mine, amassing joy at the touch of something pure. There are tortuous moments of silence chiseling our bodies apart as they navigate the uneven ground, toes stepping over rising roots that look like grandmother’s arms, stones erupting, pushing away the layers of lost life making homes for tiny legged potato beetles. Your fingers unravel from mine, your arm twisting taut behind you, shoulder blade cutting through your flesh as you move forward three steps ahead, my shyness an anchor around your free thoughts, and as your hand breaks from mine I am showered with the vision of skin stranding into silk ribbons hung on the hooks of your desire. You find a sharp stick, hold it to your eyes for inspection, lips moving silently, your mind circumnavigating a world I cannot see. You begin writing our poem into the moist earth, with its’ hidden fears, its’ death, its’ seed of life, its’ fragility, with sweeping arcs and dominating angles, standing at first and then falling close to the words you cannot take with you. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"The Poisoning"

The proclamation of my loud shoes against the pavement sets me on edge. The safety of light is sparse between lamps, as the two burning circles barely touch. It is in this place I hear a second set of footfalls, unsure if it is my secret fear of darkness leeching into my ear, or if it is a perpetrator stalking me. My feet scurry beneath me faster, my head on a swivel searching blackness and finding nothing I can place a finger on. The echoes travel closer and quicker in shadows, and the saliva in my mouth runs dry, and my voice wants to scream, but lingers on the back of my tongue, unable to cross the desert of my mouth. There is a clearing with a lake of mercury, the moon floats in the center like a cultured pearl, an imperfection of the highest degree, luring me near. I pull my shoes off breaking into a run, the high grass slicing into my muscles like double-edged daggers as I split the night with my body. I run with arms and legs pumping like a machine in full tilt, running from the echo, running from the defalcator. Diving under the surface of the lake, face painted in molten mercury, poisoning my mouth and my eyes, arms pulling me deeper and deeper into the belly of my monster, its green weedy tongues entangling my limbs until the thrashing is done, until my breath is nothing more than silver bubbles filled with fear, rising to the surface, a woman released. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Frigid Spaces"

Passing through your house, a breath heard in my ear, a shadow leaking into my head. I turn to see the you that isn’t there, just a pocket of cold air running down my neck, and I know it must be you, I step into this frigid space with lips parted, waiting for the knife of our love to pierce my chest, closing the door on this haunting life so I can sleep again. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Haphazard Approaches"

Flowers call to the inside of me, not the planting or the growing, but the need to give them a name. The rush of classifying by parts and pieces filled with deconstructing blooms, digging into their haves and have-nots, and diving into microscopic challenges moves me. The book used is more like the code of Hammurabi than science; its immutable attention to detail inspiring elevated states of perfection. The dance of pollination with its haphazard approaches becomes all too evident in the fruits of their labors, sweet swollen ovaries, the golden crowns of flirtation. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Death and Taxes"

A letter from the IRS creates a rage that mumbles under my breath distracting me from the fight we tangoed with the night before. In slow motion, I watch the car in front of me plow into an orange marbled cat, hind legs bending into unnatural proportions, spine snapping easily into paraplegia. Not one brake light, or turn of the head as flesh was crumpled under new treads, cat left crawling on front paws, claws gripping the blacktop, cries howl out in disbelief. I have taxes to pay. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Saints in Waiting"

An old man hovers in the waiting area at midnight with his small, blue eyes muddied from years of alcohol and smoke. I ask him if I can help him and he opens his mouth, teeth rotting, breath laced with drink telling me he needs to talk. He starts with his worries no one loves me nervously touching his face sickness in his family, wrongs and rights committed unto others, love and sadness, old war times, and how the wife tells him to SHUT UP you bastard. Loving words spill from him about his dead father, a man always on the straight and narrow, a man who spoke line after line from the Bible in stern tone. He speaks of his two sisters both smart and good looking, accomplished teachers and nurses, his insignificance apparent, of their distance (with)in geographical closeness. Plastic covered pictures flipped, neat faces of children and grandchildren he never sees or holds run by, animated. He tells me of the time his son hugged him for no reason, tears welling in his eyes, rims red and moist as he carefully touches them away can’t waste what little I have. I stand there with shades of (in)difference, thinking of stories about old beggars at the roadside whom no one will help Will work for food prophets, deities, monks saints in waiting, testing the fiber of humanity, testing the soul’s moral fortitude Aleathia Drehmer 2007