Curled

She is 98 going on 50
and I am changing her back
into her clothes for discharge home.

We chat about remembering
not to take too many of her new pills
without talking to the doctor,
as she rests a hand upon my forearm,
her touch light and feathery
with fragile, thin skin.

I look into her eyes to find
the edges reddening, brim with sad tears
on the brink of spilling.

She tells me she doesn’t understand
why sickness has found her family
so late in her life.

She grips me now with tiny fingers,
speaking of her son curled
in a bed from stroke,
how he had never hurt anyone in his life
to deserve such an end,
such a fate.

There is nothing I can say
so I start to cry, place my hand
upon her brittle, gray hair

sliding it down until is rests
on her cheek to catch the tear
that got away.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Words Dance 10/08 (Issue 12)

Apples and Cinquains

Sitting next to him
in the cusp
of what would have been
sixteen years of life spent
in each other’s company,
I heave a breath that cuts the room.

Our backs hunch over
sitting in tiny blue chairs
built for small people
as we listen to our progenies
academic achievements.

The teacher looks through
the painful silence between us
and I find myself
counting the puffs of oxygen
coming from the tank neatly
strapped to her back
to distract me from the truth of it all.

At the end, we stare at the pile
of drawings and stories,
the culmination of our combined seeds,
trying to decide what fragments of her
we cannot bear to part with.

As I walk to my car alone,
I look sideways and see him there
in his seat, sun hitting the windshield
and his face is twisted as if crying.
Part of me wants to knock on the window
and simply say, “I’m sorry.”

But I know that would somehow
never be enough,
so I keep walking
with the sound of gravel under my feet.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Words Dance 10/08 (Issue 12)

A Bee in the Belfry

You are a monk on the bench in the garden blessed by a god
neither of us believe in. Your belly a great rising and falling
of intuition as the faint perfumes from Yucca and Oxlip
float into your mouth on the easy breaths that come in half sleep,
and I a bee amidst the stems and petals, adventuring out
several feet at a time reporting back colors, whorled leaves,
and densely tangled ground cover to your deaf ears.

A benevolent smile peels your lips, eyes close in
the winking summer light dancing minuets
across the bridge of your nose until it finds me still
and silent in the world’s greatest perfection.

I come to rest on the worn wood beside you,
leaving no space for air between us.
Our warming damp skins mingle,
ribs touch in rhythm to the raven’s call;
your arm rests over my shoulder like moth wings
as the belfry comes alive, scattering vibrations through the blue.

My lungs hold their breath, feel yours continue
even and sweet, then release in time to meet
your bones that cage the dove, burning quiet.

You speak at once about bodies buried at our feet.
Their gift the flowers, wild and entangled,
growing from the bone dust of pious men.

I knew then, I loved you.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Flutter 10/08

After the party, standing in the rain

Today the rain has washed away that woman’s
face done in chalk on the pavement
while I spoke to you that afternoon weeks ago.

I can still see her like a ghost,
hair pulled back in a loose bun
at her neck with tendrils at her ears.

I had plans for her, plans for retouching
the wisps of hair curled round, kissing her cheek,
plumping the bottom lip and shining the eye.

But life is messy and it gets cleared
when the universe sees fit to do it.
And I am surprised by how little it took
to clean the palette of its dust, leaving
no trace on the surface of its existence.

But the sun has burned it in
to the palm of my hand, into my retina

and I can still see the curve of her forehead from here.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Nibble (Issue 4)

balancing a cup on the edge of a garbage can

agitated fingers
long and slender
twist the helix of time.
these are two roads
that never cross,
but call his mental state
a bad case of identity theft.
they incriminate his coat
as evidence against him.
he refuses to part with it,
lest we discover the truth
locked in to the fibers
of the fur trim he strokes at his neck.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Nibble 9/08 (Issue 3)

They always get what they want

The thought of mating rituals
has not been entertained in years
and she fails to notice
the dances going on around her,
already captured and caged
forgetting the thrill of a man’s advances;
The smell of cologne, hands at the small of her back
or a gentle cupping of the elbow.

She has forgotten how close
He’ll lean in to whisper nothings in her ear
about dinner or music or even the weather,
and she won’t hear words,
only the treble in his voice
as it vibrates across her skin.

She remembers now about the loud music
and its excuse for him to angle into her
to smell the sweetness of her shampoo
mixed with the excited musk of her flesh.

In turn he knows his breath,
warm and fast, will melt her
in all the right places
regardless of what he says.

And he plays cat and mouse, easing back,
out and away from her,
knowing she is hungry
enough
to chase.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by DecomP 11/08