"Fragile"

Women spend their time whittling away his heart, soft as soap, each tender word slicing curls of lye and fragrance so easily melted with careless, warm tears. It is their American sensibility, inbred ideals of wasting, of unending abundances, of grasses greener in another pasture while the seeds of his heart prepare to germinate with only the thought of a gentle touch, so willingly cultivated by glances ripe with desires promised. But these women do not understand the chemical composition of something as fragile as soap, as love, something so simple and pure with its powers to cleanse all that is tainted, to hold them upward into rebirth, into the sun that rises above the morning fog hanging heavy over their lids. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Munyori Poetry Journal 10/07

"Beating Her Chest"

I tell my heart to shut up, stop lingering where she doesn’t belong, beating in directions she shouldn’t for the sake of morality and social customs, but she never listens to me, never turns an ear to the voice of reason, never can remember each time she has been cut and stabbed or stolen from the wrinkled edge of my green shirt sleeve. She calls out my name, yelling about personal freedoms and how I never let her spread her love around. How I keep her caged for the properness of it, and she raises her fists to the chains that bind her fast to one lonely soul for all eternity. She begs me to understand that feeling love makes it real despite my glooming cloud of self-made guilt hovering over us both. She starts beating her chest again, hard and fast so I cant ignore her; Reminds me that love never dies or shrivels or stays in one place for very long, but each time I find it lying on my doorstep, on the radio, in the grass, on his face, in her eyes, on a kiss that the rush of it can still overwhelm me, the warmth of it feeling as good as the first time it was tasted. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Munyori Poerty Journal 10/07

"The Horai"

At the horizon line the sky is the color of summer skin touched with delicate jet trails crossing patterns into the thinning atmosphere. They whip stitch the clouds together, building the blanket of coming winter. I gather it to my chin. The moon hangs petulant, a silver sickle beheading the crowns of the Horai, scattering them among the rising stars, barely perceptible above the curves of the highway. The high road leans like a well built woman in repose, slicing the faded light with her hips, thick with sin and destruction I drive into willingly. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Mt. Llullaillaco"

She is Aclla, virgin of the sun, ripe at fifteen for sacrifice plucked from the horde of girls stabled with honor in the House of Chosen Women. The capacocha ritual deemed highest honor to a family and most sacred, is a journey that could claim more than the lives being offered, more than a virgin’s blood set to appease Incan gods to stave off the release of thick fire upon crops and cattle. The girl is frozen in a state of perfection with head bowed, dark hair skillfully plaited by mothers hands, strands falling over her shoulders, pieces lingering in front of her face touched in red pigments made from earth and berry. A dusting of coca leaves encrusted to her upper lip eases the pain of her sacrifice. And her body is bent like a bow, shoulders shrouded with the Iliclla, its’ brilliant red stripes clasped to her breast with hand turned silver. Legs are crossed, hands in her lap resting over her asco as if in prayer lost atop this icy pit, a crater formed from times the gods had no virgins. One looks at her face wondering if she tasted the salt laced into the ice as it fell on her pretty head 22,109 feet above the world. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Charcoal"

The prospect of sleep is dangerous and unpredictable, legs moving his body a ghost in the night, eyes blind and turned brain awakened to faces hovering on the underside of his lids. He is stripped naked of control and still, nimble feet traverse steep stairs leading him to small dark spaces crouched in the corner, a filthy cur his face in high fever with lines streaming from his fingertips stained in thick black charcoal. In the light, sheets twisted about legs like knots, he finds faces of women, arms, legs, breasts, lips etched into paper with delicate and intimate precision; the only evidences of his dissonance are ebony fingers and throbbing skull. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Complications of Love"

My day is made up of little cuts and digs drizzled with rubbing alcohol and he is oblivious to the way it stings me, damages me, even when told. He is blinded by the parameters of the fence he’s built around my love, around me to keep me from moving too far out of mediocrity. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Agua 2007

"Too Much To Ask"

Is it too much to ask to find women with a bit of meat and grit? Women who make me a better person for just being in their presence. Women who have courage and fortitude while still remaining soft in all the right ways. Women who talk with their hands and eyes as well as with their mouths. Women who aren’t afraid to be crude, to channel their inner male. Women who give a hug worth falling into. Women who have flaws, sweet embraceable chinks in their physical armour. Women who love so much it hurts them, but they cant stop. Women who have brains, and use them instead of hiding behind beauty and easily duped men. Women with freedoms and liberties and hearts. Is it too much to ask to find women with a bit of meat and grit? Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Utopia"

My mind constructs the perfect shoulder to cry on, broad and strong with collarbone sharp as a blade running up through the soft cotton of his imaginary blue shirt. His neck lean and muscular with the propensity to hide a face streamed with tears, soft sobs absorbed into the skin as their salts mingle. The warmth of his arms encircles me, heavy and anchoring so I cannot float away into the gray sky like a child’s balloon that has slipped from a tender wrist unknowingly. And in this grip I understand just how full my shell has become with the collection of useless words and ambitions, dreams unapproved by his majesty, so I agree to carry it still despite the murmuring in my ear, this imaginaries voice, whispering truths about the weight a hurt mother puts on the minds of us all. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Subversions"

Marcel said, “I’m carving oceans, sweetheart” as the blade of his knife slashed through the air splitting electrons, reshaping space and time with eyes taped over to save them from the light. The earth ripped, formed canyons filled with hallowed ranting, the force of the blow enough to bleed salt from the soil until it filled with the powers of submersion and watery subversions, too many temptations to be ignored. I tell Marcel, “It is there you will find me swimming.” Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by The Facebook Review 10/07

"If Only We Were In California"

Behind abandoned buildings found through a maze of shifting alleys without outlets, you are my Manson, I your Crenwinkle sitting in the dark cross-legged, high on smoke and the adventures spilling from your mouth; stories so tall and absurd they are nearly believable. I watch the theatrics of your hands, convinced, coupled with your cold hard, unflinching stare realizing how the power of suggestion moves wayward girls. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Zygote in My Coffee Print #4

"Ecosystems"

The properties of my flesh intertwine in the invisible worlds encircling the space around my head. You move there, hovering over me with ideas reckless, off the cuff, and dirty. You pull it all in, stroke it with your fingers, calloused and crude, to just let it sift through the spaces in your heart. Tiny seeds of injustice and lust germinate with the electricity coming from your mouth. They are plumped by your tongue, by your blood stained words and grow perfect ecosystems of beasts in brackish waters, forged by money and the filth of man, and you chain me to these possibilities of change with the touch of your hand. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"The Funeral March"

A bee falls in mid flight, days numbered from the beginning of inception, and it is this moment when all matters of energy change hands. Troops of ants in their neat fastidious lines, methodically plying the infinitesimal structures of another species from its still beating heart, taking death to make life, carrying a weight in their jaws, (a milligram may as well be a mountain) and this becomes the burden of their own life span. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"West Coast Light"

I dream in west coast light, bathe in Pacific breezes with sea foam pouring from my mouth, tiny white clouds, pieces of me easily dissolved into tears when the rains come to pull down the canyon walls; when they come too late to put out the flames of my summer fueled desires, and I awake to the sound of hard northern winds, spiked with sharp needles of icy rain, and there is no sun for my head until I find the time to dream again. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Hobo Camp Review 3/09

"And Truths Were Spoken"

Her limbs at right angles to the sides of the bed, lavender sheets the color of spring dusk, and her body rests in it unsettled, devoured by lucid dreaming, tortured with words of another formed in harsh tones. Pain is condensation on the high brow with strands of chlorine-stained hair plastered askew making a death mask. She is awakened by lips taking of her flesh not willfully given; the sensation akin to desperate grasping to take back something stolen in the name of property and posterity. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Dispositions:

We are separated by one hour and twelve minutes, a geographic closeness finding us expelled from different mothers, but somehow alike in matters of disposition and soul. You are the parts of me I keep tucked under the shell, the parts that sting eyes when seen, those that burn a finger's touch, the kiss that scorns loves presence. Your stare tells me everything I need to know about pain and suffering, the vulnerability of man despite tough exteriors, and hands that brush off attacks hoping for exclusion from the truth, but at the heart of our connection, the place where palms graze each other in passing, we find the essence of our beings constructed of the same thread weaved inward over time. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Guard Dog"

Microscopic knives pierce holes into my flesh as the words you utter find their way through me, imperceptible to the masses but wrapped in arsenic that seeps to my heart. Your love sits in the corner on guard, a growling, seething junk-yard dog that I do my best to ignore, in hopes that you will just disappear in the froth and hatred from your mouth. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"What Lies Beyond The Night"

A breath of wings as the owl scourges the night, its eyes of light reflecting like glass jewels, talons tipped in bloodstones, grasping branches of trees standing straight in the absence of roots. They are mere vertical bones that sleep in darkness like prodigal daughters in white silk sheets, while rivers of snow twisting into water seep beneath them, skin untouched by elements and labors. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Wings of Icarus 9/07

"Invisible Hatreds"

Grandmother takes the needles from the pine bough, threads them with invisible hatreds, each cotton string dipped in a fine coating of shames. She holds me in contempt of the old ways, working her needles into the core of what makes me a woman, a flower. She stitches together the earth and metal, connects them to the wood and sets them on fire. The water flows over her hands sewing swiftly the losses and taunting fingers pointed in laughter, getting more embittered by the minute. She absolves herself of the burdens placed upon her own head, by her grandmother, empties into me the daggers laid into her for not being a sun. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published Munyori Poetry Journal 10/07

"Text"

Sometimes the weight of one solitary word (situation) is enough to sink me under the surface, the water slowly engulfing the openings of my skull, the muddy line seamless to my skin, ghost kisses to eyelids like a death so yearned for, yet mourned as well. But it is this stone of a word (situation) on my brain that slips me down as if it were a room to hide my desires, a place to store my tears in jars with lids sealed, my heart in a viewing glass spectators watching it beat evenly and lonely, circulating the blood of creativity in infinite loops never touching beyond the idea. (situation) Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Burning"

He sits there with his lion of a heart, burning the dove with its virginal breast bleeding in the mouth, ivory fangs sinking into the flesh deep, piercing something undeniably good, until the breath is escaped. This worn, misshapen hand reaches, unable to release the clenching jaw, its destruction visible from this place, where I am wrapped in bubblegum ideals and false pretenses of hope. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Wings of Icarus 9/07

"Pencils and Paper"

It is a race to the school bus stop, though there is plenty of time. She jaunts five steps ahead of me, doesn’t look back or wait. The prospect of sharing secret giggles, learning rhymes, clapping hands, making moony faces at boys trying to win their favor, if for just a moment, and etching out rudimentary faces in crayon, all appeal to your nature. There is some part of me shaking uncontrollably inside, over the fact that I am no longer the center of your universe, that I am less interesting than pencils and paper, no longer captivating now that wheels turn and carry you into social circles to a boy named Robert. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Cerebral Catalyst 9/07

"Native Tongues"

All of their languages swirl around our heads each morning like smoke hanging above water, and we soak our faces in the lilts and inflections of their native tongues straining to understand. These differences do not phase Chloe, she doesn’t recognize discrepancies of skin and eyes and voices like I was raised to notice. And for me, I sit there engulfed, listening to the mothers talking rapidly but soft, with my eyes closed and travel to lands beyond my reach, to find a light hidden in the children, something special and true about the borderless limits to their laughter. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Amarillo Bay 2/08