"Staring down a white-tailed doe"

Small town factories put the hard line on faces. All of them in a vertical destruction of youth, skin hanging there a wrinkle of time. Generations pulling long hours sucking in black death, diamond death, poverty death. It is all tattooed on the inside of lungs, painted over eyes, along the jaw clenched unknowingly. The subconscious is the only faction aware that there were once dreams of something more than making rent and car payments, of cigarettes and six packs consumed. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by The Cerebral Catalyst 3/08

"Lying in the Grass"

it mats down in the shape of a body forming that high wall, a fortress. impressions sink into the very earth; breath a wind clattering together with bladed chimes. heart beatings through moist ground, reverberations from the core and his eyes are nothing but pools of untouched sky. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by Erbacce 2/08

"Blue"

For a brief moment the house was silent save the scratching of the needle on old vinyl, words floating in air from the farthest room “All I really want our love to be….” And I felt his shoulders slump when he heard the words, when the kettle whistled when the drawer slid open And water poured into the empty cup; sugar bowl scraped across the counter the spoon clinked before it hit liquid. I felt the sound of his sigh, deep and long the last of our love escaping in a breath that resumed the house to its usual noises. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Erbacce (for Gloom Cupboard) 2/08

hollow

we are a tangible child's pose twisted unto ourselves in the bottom of the shower hot water scalding old hides into scarlet costumes. we are the pain creeping into joints without remorse, the pulling of muscles flexed beyond intention, the subtle tightening a warning to us all. we are soon an empty shell pink and new found on unformed particles of glass potentials deep and tonal if only our fingers could release it to the sea. we are nothing save the loose flesh stretched over sinew and long bones; human lorica, segmented until returned to the earth a burrowed stillness, slivers of magic found in the dead of night. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by Silenced Press 2/08

Atmospheric Pressure

Cold clutches her, breath visible from nostrils and mouth. She pats her chest as if this will equalize the atmosphere moving inside her, the air steeling her, the sound of rebirth in this game of ball played with five brothers and a father, whose face speaks to his offspring of light and knowing wrapped around each of them. Their unseen boundaries of victory evident in the ticking, coming from chests synchronized and loud; something born unto them, an extra machine with a perfectly calculated compass, affixed to the apex pointing them upward and outward. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by The Beatnik 2/08

The River

for Gail I question the worth of my character in this moment, attempting to find some clue, a common ground to the mystery of my charm as my face takes on mixed emotions rapidly, animated in graceful but stilted movements. And he tells me quite frankly, with mouth’s edge curled upward, that all women are crazy. And somehow men find what they need amidst the chaotic flow of ever revolving faces worn without remorse to find the gentleness and grace that touches them floating in the river. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by The Beatnik 2/08