My Abdication

The Well

2011-07-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

“Are you there?”

“Yes, what’s up Walt?”

There was silence on the other end except for his breathing into the mouthpiece. It wasn’t that labored prank phone call breathing, but something more contemplative and measured. It was laced with beats not everyone could hear. Its feeling unregulated. She waited for his litany.

“I think you need to come over here right now. I mean really because there is something you have to try. It is off the chain.” She could feel him fidgeting over the phone; could see the tremble in his hands and the tapping of his toes he did unconsciously that she always noticed.

“Walt….it is a really long drive for this time of night.”

“I know, but you have to,” he insisted. His insistence was always child-like and never offensive. The power behind his asking was always knowing that she would say yes. This made her predictable and in turn made her irritated with herself. “Ok.”

***

Marnie pulled into the dirt driveway and made a mental note of the sound the stones made under her tires. It reminded her of the day she found out her grandfather died. He was old and crazy and mean and now dead. For some reason it didn’t stir her heart towards him, but she liked the sound just the same. It was dark now that she was in the country out by the lake. Marnie had hoped the moon would have given a bit more reflection off the water, but like most everything else, it disappointed her. She was egotistical for even thinking the moon would be so gracious.

Walt her the creak of her car door and stood on the porch leaning on the pillar. He was smoking a joint and Marnie liked that smell too. She told herself she wasn’t going to smoke. She couldn’t afford being loose in the mind. It disintegrated her inhibitions and made her reckless. She shuddered with the memories too many to count. Walt’s toes were still tapping his internal beat. They were his metronome and sometimes they were hers too.

"Ok Walt. I am here. What is so fucking fantastic I had to drive out to the boonies for?”

“The well,” he said matter of fact.

“The well? I drove all the way out here for the well? Seriously Walt, I am damn tired. There better be a fucking baby in it that I have to rescue.”

“No, no baby in there. You have to taste the water….it’s off the chain.”

“You asked me over here to have some water? God, why do I always say yes?” Marnie turned to go back to her car. If she left now, she could still get home before she was deathly tired…before she ran herself off the road.

Walt grabbed Marnie’s arm gently. She looked at his fingers in the dark and then at him, but all she could see was the glow from the lit joint on his lips. He sensed she was irritated about being touched. He could feel it on her skin and so he let go.

“Wait Marn…come on. Just come taste it and talk to me.”

“I’m pissed right now Walt and you don’t want to talk to me, seriously.”

He took her hand this time. He liked the softness of it so he held it awhile. They said nothing. He put all his good energy into that hand sitting lightly in his. He felt Marnie’s body slacken a little the longer he held it. He felt her mood soften some. It was time for the water.

“Come on,” he whispered.

In the dark, Walt led Marnie to the well even though she knew where it was. She let him take her there…let him have this important moment. She didn’t understand what was so great about the well and what, if anything, it had to do with her. She closed her eyes as he walked her there. It was too dark to see anyway. Marnie knew Walt would not let her fall.

The well was traditional and stone built with a bucket. It made Marnie want to make wishes and she supposed she had made a few a time or two without telling Walt she did. In the blackness, she listened to the pulley haul the bucket up from the water. There was that rush of the pail ripping the placid surface and the cascade of splashes as it spilled over the sides on the way up. Walt pulled the bucket from the center of the well and let the rope go limp behind it. He set it on the edge and cupped his hands into the cold, clean earth driven water.

Walt offered his hands to Marnie. “Here, drink this.”

“You want me to drink out of your hands? Are you being a pervert?”

"No I am not being a pervert. Just drink the fucking water already!”

Marnie hated it when he swore at her. It was unlike him and now she knew they were both irritated. She stepped closer to him and reached out in the dark to find his wet hands. They had a slow leak and the water was dripping onto the tops of his shoes. There was that beat again. Always a beat. She held his hands in hers and drank from them as if she had her face in a stream.

The water was beyond anything she had ever tasted. Her mouth felt alive and her thirst doubled and tripled with each slurp. When she had drank it down so low, she began to lap it up like a cat. She stood there in the dark licking the water off the texture of his skin. Her head was spinning. Her heart was bursting with light. Her body feather like. Her thoughts somehow free. Free. Free.

Walt took his hands away from her mouth and put them on her shoulders. By the well in the night they had shared something. They both knew it.

“I just saved you,” Walt said quietly.

“I know.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Not From Here Are You? Guest Writer, 1/11

100 Years Will Get You Nothing

2011-07-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

I blow my nose
standing topless in front
of the bathroom mirror,
after reading a poem
about an centenarian
awaiting the revolution,
with my breasts lying flat
against my chest like that old man’s
dream of an uprising. I struggle
with the box of tissues—
pull out too many and catch
a glimpse of my tired face
and even more tired body
and wonder exactly
what am I doing here?

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Nibble

Cy Twombly, Animula Vagula, 1979

2011-07-20T09:32:00.000-05:00

His soul speaks in tongues
all snakebite

hellfire

brimstone

A hand on the bible

one in the air,
mouth sucking in
a yellow ochre moon,
painting over the stars
with proposed holiness
that will get him locked
out of the gates.

He warbles into the night

sparks at his fingertips
body arced back
speaking with a devil’s
intention—split and bleeding

and all the lost ones

gather round to read

the writing on his skin.
They wait quietly
for redemption.

Aleathia Drehmer 2011

Published by Riverbabble 1/11

Descendants of Centum Languages

2011-07-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

Tears painted my cheek
and then your shoulder
as we listened to the wind
rap against the glass,
repeatedly, begging to come in.

You whispered,

Don’t cry.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Decompression 12/10

False Dreams of a Nightingale

2011-05-24T16:12:00.001-05:00

People move in and out of tables
around us, each ordering plates of eggs
and toast. The smell of pancakes with
maple syrup is sickly sweet after
long hours in the ER, saving lives.

Both of us sit there
in an abbreviated second wind,
the years showing on her face
as I am sure they also do on mine
with all the losses we cannot forget.

There are tears over shared tragedies,
still fresh and painful,
that lead to ragged napkins
crumpled on the table amongst
the empty creamers and cold coffee.

She leaves the spot across from me
and I am suddenly aware of what this life
will become; one thankless night
after another, spanned over the decades
of my life, until I am here again

watching people drip egg on their shirts.
They make straws into geometric designs
in the awkward silences between bites
and I think to myself that I should have hugged her
when she told me her friend died.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Decompression, 12/10

Lost Season, a novena

2011-05-24T16:05:00.000-05:00

Day One

The light is faint through the window and my body lies in the silence of morning. She has died, I know. Her brilliance faded into tendrils of weakness on tree limbs and broadsided homes. Her smile is absent on my skin. She has died, I know. I rise with feet hovering above the sea of neutrality.

Day Two

They have come with her burial shroud, lacy and white, sheer muslin from stitched vapors in the crow’s beak. For once, they have nothing to say….just this once when I look for their clear calling across the meadow. She has died, I know. They have come as pall bearers now. I lift hands to sky asking questions; I stand willing and open for answers, however small. She has died, I know.

Day Three

I know when the ladybugs swarmed the air in a scarlet wind weeks ago that time was closing in, but never imagined she’d really go. It was not urgent in my mind, but now the elders have lined up in their naked grace. She has died, I know. Their once flexible branches now stiff in her passing. They no longer speak to me. Why is everyone so silent? Why is there no more crying out in the night? She has died, I know. I lay my hand upon great trunks with rough bark feeling for the heat of their cores, but there is nothing.

Day Four

She has died, I know. The path is covered in frost this mourning when I have come to absolve my disillusions of the world in her face. She would speak to me in the place where the paths crossed, where choices always come to be made. She has died, I know. “Mother” I call standing small with my own heart pumping in hand. I wait for an answer.

Day Five

“Come quick into the light before it goes” they whisper and from the downy wings of sleep my blanket warmed body shuffles from the dark cave in my mind. She has died, I know. With my head hanging and solid, I find the door. Its metal is rude and real. I need not open it to know that truth is only meant for dreams. She has died, I know. The window tells me to go back from whence I came. There are no answers here.

Day Six

In the night, I lie awake aware that maybe I have missed her in sleeping. My despair is fondled and molded into a new shape. It is warm and sticky on my fingers. She has died, I know. The night will not give me the answers. He is shrewd and keeps secrets. I count the breaths exhaled from my chest, waiting for something. She has died, I know.

Day Seven

I have counted 5,760 breaths, all of which whispered her name like a prayer. My body is suspended there momentarily until I go to the crossroads again. The goldenrod is gray there and the grass suffocated in thin white ice. The japonica will not even look at me; she has died, I know. I will wait until she comes. I will not move from this vigil. She has died, I know. The candle in my heart grows dimmer.

Day Eight

Sometime in the night my body collapsed onto the path. The pattern of rocks pressed sharply into my flesh, biting my cheek. She has died, I know. My nose shimmers with blue and I half wonder if I am still breathing. Have I forgotten to live while waiting? The thrush perches off in the distance. It calls me to waking, reminds me why I’ve come. Frozen hands push up frozen limbs from the ground. She has not come.

Day Nine

I have given up the wanting. She has died, I know. And by the window I sit more innocent than is understandable to me and somehow I am so empty I’ve become full. The rock pattern is still faintly indented into rosy cheek and I touch its outline. In it, I find the answer. Some grace of spirit has come to show me I am only human; I am real. She has died, I know.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Toy(ing) with the Revolution

2011-05-24T15:57:00.001-05:00

You can’t wrap your fingers
around it, the elusive it.

There aren’t too many
things to wrap a finger

around, but the image
burns my eyes; your

fingers long and rough
wrapping around the neck

of the establishment. You
mutter it is all gift wrap

for tiny toys anyway. I try to laugh
but all I see are toy machetes

and your fingers the revolutionaries
taking it all down; your breath

the revolution itself, pulling
it in and spitting it back out.

Your tears create the flood
that washes them all away.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Prathamata (India), Print, 2010

Raw

2011-05-24T15:52:00.001-05:00

We were opposites then,
I was olde world
and you were new—
inverted paradigm
freshly enslaved.

It is all stolen
Time
Light
Breath
Chance.

It is all quick
in this black night
of rain slicked
pavement with
angles incongruent
and mouths indifferent.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Prathamata (India), Print, 2010

Reading Tea Leaves at Midnight

2011-05-24T15:46:00.001-05:00

Through the window
the street light reflects
off the abandoned cars,
windows sheathed in the night’s
dew, now hardening into frost.

It is cold enough outside
to see the anatomy of autumn.
His sword falls onto the necks
of everything living, his blow
only hard enough to maim;
the deconstruction a whisper.

And inside, his fingers stitch
cobwebs in the empty places
we didn’t know existed.
We will find them when it is too late,
when the ground is covered in pale
misery, when there is no inspiration
to fight back.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by MUST, 10/10

Burrett's Mound

2011-05-24T15:40:00.000-05:00

Josephine sat in the corner of the shelter off the edge of the yard. Her back was pinned against the cool pounded earth walls her grandfather had built so many years ago. She pulled her knees into her chest at the horror of the beastly winds above ground. They had not even reached her yet, but she felt their presence before the sirens beckoned her under earth.

She had been sitting on the porch after the day’s work in the fields, her knees feeling older than the stud beams of this house, watching a fall storm roll in across the flat plains of Kansas. Josephine had never lived anywhere but here on the outskirts of Topeka. She had never seen a mountain in real life nor the ocean. The thought of seeing those things were considered as implausible as living forever. But there on the far horizon the thunderheads formed. The lightning flashed like a fierce tongue lashing from Zeus. Josephine believed in Gods and Saints and all matter of higher powers. It was foolish not to in these tough lands with the devastation they could unleash.

Jo stood from the chair with her hand on the railing suddenly afraid of the electricity in the air. The chill of a freshly turned October was laden in skin as she pulled her sweater tighter. She had a feeling about this one despite it being late in the year, Josephine knew twisters could crop up if the heavens aligned just right; if the opposing air masses transcended their allotted space in the world. Now, she didn’t have any children to worry about and no man graced her bed (not in a great many years ) so she closed up the house and walked slowly to the shelter just passed the squared patch she had spent all day toiling.

The metal doors were heavy and rusty and in great need of oiling, but Josephine never seemed to find the time to do this sort of thing. She had not climbed down into this hole in so many years. With her flashlight, she located the tiny staircase and let the door clatter behind her. The sound was painful and filled her ears with pressured air. Josephine found the bench, sat down, and waited. She turned the flashlight off.

Here she was with an empty head and a racing heart that only beat faster in the darkness. An acrid taste formed in her mouth listening to the storm rage, rattling the steel doors like a rabid animal. Josephine sat there curled in a ball whispering devotions to St. Swithin under her breath knowing this time, he would not relent the storm. She prayed anyway.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Doorknobs & Bodypaint, Winner of the Hayward Fault Line Section, Issue 60

Batting .359

2011-05-24T15:37:00.000-05:00

“Mr. Gibson, can you hear me?”

Josh Gibson heard the young nurse speaking at him, recognized nervousness in her voice and wondered if he looked that bad, or if she were merely star struck to be taking care of the “black Babe Ruth”?

“God it’s dark inside my head. I sho wish I could open my eyes,” he thought, feeling his lips move but knowing he wasn’t making no sound. Last he remembered it was 1943 and he was on his way to being the best baseball player in history…in any league. “I’ve done performed some exceptional deeds in these years of mine,” Gibson decided before fading into this continued state of dream inside a dream.

He faintly recalled sitting in some group session in the mental institution listening to the counselor tell them about St. Dymphna, the patron saint of their mental conditions and him snidely shaking his head. “You can pray to her if you like, she has been known to bring miracles of the mind,” the prim older lady told them. Somehow he couldn’t find it in his heart to pray to some vaulted Irish girl, what could some little, ghost of a white girl do for him now.

He felt the seizing of his brain; the lights fractured and sounds slowly fell under the current until there was nothing. He wasn’t sure what happened really. No one told him anything. He didn’t even know what day it was.

“Mr. Gibson, you alright in there?”

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Doorknobs & Bodypaint, Doorknobs section, Issue 60

Going to Prison (non-fiction)

2011-05-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

In April, I will take my daughter across the country to Arizona to visit relatives that have never been a thought in her head. I contemplated not even going, to not even open up that section of questions and family when they were never even formed, but in good conscience I could not let my bad familial ties become hers. In Arizona there are a handful of cousins I have not seen in 20 years, a niece I have never met and an uncle in prison—all of whom had always been wonderful people.

One might begin to question why I would take my daughter into a prison situation and if I am honest, I must tell you my original thought was nothing more than family. In my own life, I spent a great deal of it moving around with very loose ties to my family members so that today, as an adult, they are names and faces I know, but not people that I am attached to. I did not want this for my child—to be separated from the possibility of knowing people that could somehow change her life. After thinking about the implications of bringing a young girl to a prison, I then began to see the benefits of the visit.

In this day and age I see many children that live in a nice bubble of protection afforded for them by their parents. They grow up thinking the world is happy and shiny and that everyone in it will be nice to them. As much as it pains me to know that isn’t reality, it pains me more to think I will send my child out into the world unequipped. She is a child who does not see consequences very readily; she does not understand the world out there. I remember being eight years old and it is an impressionable time. It is when independence really starts to rear its ugly head; there are only a few years of opportunity left before the teenage years when it is hard to get children to believe anything you say. The clock is ticking.

It would be safe to say that I don’t “know” these relatives of mine anymore, but in our youth we spent a great deal of time together, suffered together, laughed together and saw the world from common view points. I have always loved these cousins I am about to visit. I have always loved their father who is in prison. He is one of the kindest and funniest men I have ever met. The question was posed to me why would a man in prison want to expose his young niece to a prison setting? I have only one answer—family. Through all the hardships of his life and that which he has put his children through, he maintains that family is the most important thing in the world. It is something we cultivate no matter how hard that might be, no matter how difficult the circumstances, because in the end it is all we have.

So after contemplating these things, I asked my daughter if she would like to visit our uncle in prison when we go and her immediate reaction was tears. As an eight year old a child she only has what she sees on cartoons and television in which to form some sort of judgment as to why people are in prison and what goes on there. She had seen enough to have fear not of the prison itself, but of what was inside. I had not expected this reaction at all. It made me laugh until I saw that she was seriously worried. I told her she could stay with her cousins while I went if it scared her and she started crying harder. I asked her why and she said “because I would be worried sick about you getting hurt.” It was valiant that she thought her going with me would somehow protect me. The thought of her very being often does, though I have never told her this.

This question sparked a conversation laden with the effects of crime, prison systems and how one leads their life. I hesitated to continue on, not knowing how to approach each subject with knowledge, but had that feeling that this opportunity may never come by again. We discussed in general the reasons why some people commit crime and I spoke of our uncle’s problem specifically—drugs. I explained to her that he has spent half his life, on two separate occasions, in prison for armed robbery attempting to get money for drugs. My daughter questioned how come he just didn’t buy more instead of doing the crime.

I realized a valuable lesson about my child and how my own protective bubble keeps her from seeing the truth of the society we live in. In her generation, everything can be purchased as easy as going to the store and swiping a card; drugs are the norm; avoiding people accepted and saying things that are judgmental is easy as breathing. The estimated value of money means nothing and her perception is if you want it, you just go get it, no problem—it will always be available. I told her buying drugs is very expensive and getting caught for buying them or robbing for money to buy them is also a crime and this makes it a crime within a crime. These actions put you in jail or prison. The strained look on her face did not lessen and she had serious doubts about this uncle of ours and whether or not it would be safe to even speak to him. Her concrete thoughts were very evident and I felt like I was spinning my wheels.

I told her a story about the time I had visited a prison once during nursing school to look at the medical wing. During this tour, we saw all the sections, even general population. It was a frightening experience as an adult. The sound of bars locking, the guns and clubs, guards everywhere, the sound of the prisoners and the feeling their eyes give you as they scan you over. Going to the cell block was the most mentally defiling experience. The level of noise unbelievable and the amount of fear I could smell on myself was intense. I knew right then that prison life was never for me and that I couldn’t even stand to work there no matter how good the benefits were.

I explained to my daughter my experience and told her that she would not have to see those scary things, but she would see prisoners in the visiting room and the guards with their guns and she would get patted down before visitation. She said, “What is an eight year old going to do to hurt prisoners? I won’t have a gun.” I found it very hard to explain these hard cold facts about the world. I wanted her to live in a nice mental garden, but wondered to myself if that would really make her ready for the world? I told her imagine standing in our walk in closet and closing the door for which you could never open when you wanted to. You had no light and you had to share that space with another person even if you didn’t like each other. All your hours are spent thinking about the mistakes you made, or how to survive in a hostile place. You have no television and no computer and you wear the same clothes all the time. You get told when you can eat and when, if you are lucky, you can go outside and feel the sun on your face and remember what life could have been like…and when you imagine all of this, you are a prisoner. I told her that sometimes, people who aren’t in jail do this to themselves when they know they have done bad things. Her face softened some and thought again about the question I had asked her.

Despite her fear, she maintained that she wanted to go and meet this uncle, stating she was scared, but wanted to do it. I admired her bravery and her character and her curiosity. I told her this would be her chance to see what happens when you don’t live your life in a good way, when you let the temptations of the world take you over until you aren’t the one making the decisions. And as we finished this conversation in silence and contemplation, we passed a crew of juvenile jail workers on the side of the road showing her that living right, starts now.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by On The Wing, Full of Crow, 9/10

These days continue

2011-05-24T15:27:00.001-05:00

The sun burns the left side of my face,
and the wind follows cooling the skin slightly
pushing a loose hair across my nose, tickling it.

Marley on the radio sings about Jammin’
as I peer over the laptop
at delicate blushed tulips and blue flags
unfurling in light; tiger lilies wait to explode
and I think of you sitting at the table with me.

Our silence would be comfortable
with hands reaching across the space between,
fingers touching like feathers.

Love is as easy as that one movement,
as easy as spring through paned windows,
as easy as the cat at our feet,
as easy as summer music,
or as easy as fresh faced flowers tilting towards heaven.

Yes, I think of you now,
here in this moment sharing life and breath,
holding hands in the afternoon.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Poet Plant Press, "The Love Book", 2010

Art Can't Save Me Now

2011-05-24T15:23:00.000-05:00

There is an urgency around her neck

his finger’s watermark
left indelible from now on
changing color, solidifying
and taunting memories

          from me
          from left hooks to my jaw
          from tire marks on my mother’s bones
          from babysitter’s unrecognizable face.

I want to shake her but he has
done a fair job of that
not enough to make her leave

even though I tell her love doesn’t look like this,
doesn’t raise hands, doesn’t steal your breath by force,
doesn’t threaten icy river graves out of jealousy.

She can’t look at me
when she tells me she feels sorry
for people who have no one,
who beg her to come back
no matter what the cost.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Poet Plant Press, "The Love Book", 2010

The Runner

2011-05-24T15:18:00.000-05:00

Bridget ran through the park as if her life depended on it. She never bothered to look back, just ran until her face mottled purple in the heat of her working body; until there was a wide band of sweat encircling her brow. At the edge of the tree line, she stood hunched over with her hands on her knees, chest heaving for air. Her mind went completely numb after finding Jackson with blood on his hands, standing at the sink frantically scrubbing it away. She noticed a look of insanity on his face and how he smelled of panic.

Jackson didn’t notice her or hear her enter the apartment. He only knew Bridget was there when her elbow bobbled the vase of sunflowers from the table by the door. He watched them fall in slow motion; each petal golden and beautiful, perfect. He saw them smash to the floor and smiled at the green smelling water pooling on the Berber carpet like magic. Jackson could hear each drip as it launched itself from the lip of the cherry finished table. He could hear her breath as it increased and the covered gasp when the vase landed, but did not shatter. He could hear the guttural tones lifting up into her throat though not escaping her mouth.

“Bridget….close the door” Jackson said.

She stood there unable to move. Her mind racing “What has he done? What has he done?” over and over like a chant. Bridget felt stuck with fear as he began to move from behind the counter towards her. She felt her skin rile up and the acid in her stomach began to boil and burn her esophagus. “Ten years,” she thought, “and I don’t even know him.”

He advanced on her and she began to back up instinctively, her hands flying up in front of her as if they would stop the bulk of his fury. There was a storm on his face she had never seen before, though it was so distinct, she wondered how she never noticed it resting there latent all these years. Bridget felt her back ram into the edge of the door and she cried out in pain, stumbling. Jackson’s blood-stained hands reached out to take her arm, still wet and smelling of darkness. He wrapped his fingers around her left bicep with a fierce grip, squeezing the tips into Bridget’s flesh until it blanched beneath them. She wrenched her arm backwards and surprisingly it came free, leaving someone else’s blood transferred onto her pale skin.

Bridget looked at it a split second before she turned and started running. Her feet flew down the stairs—floated like she did when she was a child. Jackson lumbered after her, shouting things she could not understand or process. The only sounds that registered were the thumping of her heart, the blood rushing in her ears, and the quickening of breath that pinched her ribs.

She stood there now, alone; nothing more than an accordion of flesh letting the body regulate itself and waiting for the sounds of life again that would ease her back into reality. Bridget felt a wind sweep up and dry the salt to her forehead. She felt the chilling deep inside her bones as her breath suddenly lightened and her limbs relaxed into themselves. She crouched on the ground with the smell of the grass under her nose. This somehow settled her as the first drops of rain began to fall. She felt like a pebble in the river, something far beneath the surface that could not be seen or touched. And in the juxtaposition of light, Bridget watched the bloody fingerprints begin to dissolve and run down her arm. “Some things,” she said aloud to no one, “are best learned in storm.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Full of Crow Fiction 10/10

The Empty Bed

2011-02-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

What could Julia do? Bernard had been the love of her life, her every breath, her heartbeat, her sweat, her longing, her anger, her everything. She felt lost when she woke in the morning to find his side of the bed empty and cold. At first she imagined Bernard at the corner market buying fresh oranges and strawberries and maybe smelling the flowers before paying Carlos with not only money, but also with the kindness of his smile.

When he did not come back after this thought, Julia had to concoct another to excuse his absence. Maybe he went to the record store down the street, she thought to herself, he was just talking about finding that Miles Davis record from a festival in 1969. She imagined Bernard cradling the produce under his arm gently while he fingered the covers of the old records, smiling and nodding when he found something satisfactory and familiar. Julia could almost smell the must of the vinyl and hear that soft sound of pressured air as the records leaned into each other.

Bernard still did not appear after this thought. Julia began to worry a little now. She rose from the warmth of her cotton sheets, her old faded nightgown sliding over her knees where it had crawled up to in the night. She let the floor get sturdy under her feet before putting on her slippers. Julia felt the nervous tremble in her hands begin and hoped she could keep herself from a state of panic.

The lazy morning sun was piling in through the sheer curtains and Julia walked to the window and pulled one aside. The street below was bustling with early morning commuters and children off to the last days of school and old folks that had no other place to be. She scanned the area feverishly for sight of Bernard. There was no trace of him. Julia turned from the window and went to the kitchen to start the coffee. Bernard will want coffee when he returns, she thought.

Julia sat at the kitchen table, the coffee in her mug now cold as she stared at it. It was nearing noon and still he had not come home. Her face looked more aged than it should be at 62 and her thinning hair lay in ragged, dirty strands about her face. Something caught her eye from the center of the table. It was a paper or a card with Bernard’s name and face. Julia reached out but did not touch it. She was unsure of what it could be, or what it could mean. Her arm hung suspended in air, frozen in fear, until at last the tips of her fingers felt the laminated paper beneath them.

She pulled it closer to her face. There was Bernard staring at her so handsome in his wavy chestnut hair and warm smile. She touched his face, his teeth, his eyes, his curved nose. Julia read the words:

“Bernard Jones, loving husband, lay to rest in the arms of God. April 19th, 2010. He is survived by his wife Julia (Martin) Jones.”

“No,” she cried, “no!”

The shiny paper fell from her hand onto the floor. Her arm dropped into her lap like a weight. Julia began to cry.

“How could you leave me Bernard? I loved you from the attic of the world, from that ivory tower you rescued me from. I loved you wider and deeper than any ocean. I loved you. How could you leave me?”

There was nothing but the sound from the street to answer Julia; nothing but the wind blowing the curtains inward; nothing but the pounding of her own heart and the dripping of water into the sink. There was nothing.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Haggard & Halloo 8/10

The Philosophy of Heat

2011-02-11T22:53:00.000-05:00

Bart and Zaria both lie limp on the blanket under the oak tree at the park. Their books creased open onto their chests recording their ragged breaths in the blistering summer heat. The air is thick as sauna steam and Zaria’s head is pounding with dizziness. She can feel the sweat rolling from her skin and collecting onto the back of her green tank top.

“How hot is it Bart?” she asks almost too slowly so the words sound cryptic.

“Dunno sweetie, ‘bout a hundred I think.”

“Oh. It feels like we are burning in hell.”

“For your sins or mine?”

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Not From Here Are You? Special Jury Award

A Dead Man's Chest

2011-02-11T22:51:00.002-05:00

Chad was keenly aware he was trapped behind the fallen rocks. He had felt the rumble as he paddled deeper into the coastal cave. The light from his helmet scattered fractals into the dark churning waters barely lighting up the carved walls. There was history in here and maybe treasure too, but he had come for history. But that seemed less important now.

It took him several minutes to right himself after the boulder broke from the ledge above the cave causing water displacement to smash his kayak against the cool pointed formations. He had kept himself from curling under, just barely, but he had done it. The light had been weak before the opening was sealed but now he was left with only a thin shining from his head lamp. Chad allowed himself to panic for just a moment. His throat was dry and the air now torrid despite the lack of sun.

He had to find another opening before the batteries from the lamp ran dry. Chad hated to defile nature, but considered in times of life or death, being ecologically sound mattered little. He pulled the small can of spray paint from his pack and marked his starting point. He prayed he would not paddle in circles. He prayed for a ray of sunlight. He contemplated all this praying as the stilled waters were cut by his hand hanging over the side. He had come for history. He realized he might be writing his own.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Doorknobs & Bodypaint

By the River

2011-02-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

Martina sat agitated under the oppression of the Mississippi river. Her blood boiled in the August night, but not specifically from heat. An American named Frank joined her table at the café by the rolling, muddy river. He made small talk and sounded like a Yankee. Frank’s interest in Martina escalated when her French accent touched the air. He studied her face in the syrupy setting sun and how she carried her head and the shine of her chestnut hair with strands jumping loose in the heat.

She winced at his harsh English spewed forth to bait her with conversation about the history of the Louisiana Purchase and whether or not Napoleon did a disservice to France by giving up the port of New Orleans. Frank’s tone was condescending and vile as if he single-handedly supported the acquisition on his shoulders when he wasn’t even an embryonic thought at the turn of the 18th century. His arrogance made Martina livid. She cut him with her tongue and the sharp corners of her knowledge about the dealings of her own country. Both of them were overheated in patriotism.

By the time the fireflies arrived, they were silent and breathing heavy in the dark. Martina wanted to send him to the guillotine. Frank felt like he held the ability to deport her opinions to his back pocket, invoking John Adams Alien Act. He was unsure why he found his lips on hers and even more puzzled she allowed it.

Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Doorknobs & Bodypaint (winner of the Doorknobs section)

Three for Tea

2011-01-28T21:10:00.001-05:00

13 rooms fashioned in a time machine,
the relationship between magic and beauty building
until we collapse on the curved wooden bench,
golden slatted tree hearts carrying our weight,
facing Picabia’s transparencies; eyes twitching then closed.

You tumble at last with face pinned to the glass
admiring Duchamp’s chess set and his headiness
to give it all up for the game, moving pawns
through invisible patterns garnered in both minds,
ten steps ahead of time and space.

We emerge from the end of the tunnel into splintered light, its sudden lift
at once weary and heavy, pushing us down the escalator
through color blocked art we’d never witness. Descention brings
silence, no words equaling the imprints now in cells.
Our bodies part directions at the bottom.

I find you leaning over the rail outside the doors,
the glass towering above you, monolithic, and the fag
in your hand souring the air, the smoke pulls me closer.
I dream of suffocating the images, tweezing each color and form
from between sluiced gray matter with precision.

We curl our chests over together, watch relatives struggle
to push their fat, crippled kin up steep ramps from the underbelly.
The pompous rapid language of French pre-teens, intermittent with laughter,
tells how unsettled they are in their skins; how we all fit that
shame in one lifetime or another.

Our elbows touch point-to-point, inhaling and then out
love still molding and shaping its way onto blank canvas;
colors being chosen carefully, meticulous to a fault,
because some things cannot be erased.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Clutching at Straws 2/10

Faltered Exchange Through the Doorway

2011-01-28T21:06:00.001-05:00

I want to punch things---
his face, our failed
marriage, his inability to live
now, his incessant need to fumble
backwards in loop, his voice
a skipping record.

I want to scream obscenities
into the phone, decimate
what’s left of him, knock
him further into the ground
so he can’t resurrect Lazarus
again and again and again,
each time voiding another
good memory from our crumbled
union.

But I cannot
I will not
I won’t.
Instead I breathe deeply
and imagine myself
encased in the ribs
of Gandhi.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Leaf Garden Press 3/10

Loose Netting

2011-01-28T21:02:00.002-05:00

My limbs slide through the water
                                         without resistance,
                  tepid waves swallow me
                       in a vacuum of fragile, braided reflections
      as my face submerges.
             Water fills the crevices of my body
                           like whispers. I think of your
                grasping hands like loose netting
         slipping over my flesh
as I sink to the bottom.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Leaf Garden Press 3/10

No Longer Will I Be Hungry

2011-01-28T15:17:00.001-05:00

Light snow falls in thrown light,
me, spread out alone
with the sound of cycling breath
easy in late hours.

The mind wanders
into new lover’s beds, men
who don’t tarry; explorers
here only to claim parcels
of a fleshy tome for respective
queens and kings.

Tongues warm against breasts,
skilled fingers tracing shin blades,
soft lips meek on inked knees, and
all their bodies jagged and diminished;
our meeting pure existentialism.

And when they have claimed me
with colorful flags of arms,
filled bellies and eased minds,
I am left alone in snowed light
smiling into easy breathing
of late hours.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Leaf Garden Press 3/10

Sober

2011-01-28T15:13:00.001-05:00

Meek and in the corner,
she was the only one sober enough
to hear me say I was going
to the corner gas station for smokes.

She sidled up to me
and put on her coat, insisting.
I shrugged rippled with tequila
and recklessness and walked out the door.

In front of the house on the return,
we had silent folded arms under stars,
hers long and thin like bird wings tucked
under, mine lost in a coat too big.

She had something to say, I could sense,
but not enough gumption to start so
I began speaking of the fragilities of new love
and old thin strangulations by men,
hers physical and mine always mental.

She recalled her year in a domestic
abuse shelter, hiding with her daughter
and had I not been drunk already, I would
have cried for how lucky I had been
to just be lonely and isolated for years.

We spoke of single motherhood,
of making the grade in unsure times—
divorces and mental institutions looming
and the two of us strangers but together here
always grasping our insecurities with both hands.

They are driven in by false men’s hearts.
They are patted down by the unknowing.
They are looked over by family, the embarrassment
too much for any of them and we swallow
pride on a daily basis, pour secrets into
the night on streets of cities we don’t know
just to somehow get by another day
with a smile pasted to our faces.

And when my cigarette is finished
and our breaths twine in the chill of the night
there is a pause, some understanding
sealed with a nod before rejoining the others
who did not notice our leaving.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Leaf Garden Press 3/10

Waiting by the Window

2011-01-28T15:08:00.001-05:00

We carry these symbols like a dedication,
an opening to move freely between us,
as if permission needed granting. They
are collected verbs unused, abject nouns
and solemn whispers through wood.

Their metal adds weight to our chains,
slung easily into pocket or purse,
but remain heavy in hand when
not in use. They are our quiet
neglected conversations;

these keys to each other’s
apartments which never seem
to be of use. On my ring, a duo
of non-descript silver fingers
jangle with the rest of them.

They could be keys to anything, but they
are his. I have marked them in black ink.

His crux to my door is enameled royal
blue and somehow off the mark
a millimeter or two in their making;
no engagement from the tumbler,
no satisfying click and turn. I always
wait by the window anyway.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published as spoken word by The Big Other 1/10

Two dimensional ships set sail

2011-01-28T15:03:00.001-05:00

His impatience with me is sometimes
notable as I wander off taking
photographs—finding worlds around
inanimate objects where he sees none.

Our point of views drastically askew,
his alive in the observation of the human
condition, mine static in the imprints
left behind by man and woman.

The vestibule of our sights
is seen from above and below
with our ages dictating the equations
of time and amassed energy.

There is a pinched tone in his voice,
biting tongue at me
always falling behind.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Scythe Literary Journal 1/10

Orphans

2010-11-08T15:14:00.000-05:00

For Mark Hartenbach

Addresses scrawled by a stranger's pen,
such mysteries held in manila envelopes
makes one wonder where it will take them,
unsure if glued lip and taped seal
should risk being broken.

Both sit on the table like orphans
hunched on concrete stairs
of an ancient church, pleading
with moon-eye saucers,
heartbeats whisper at a gaze,
the thought of liberation
from this place, faintly possible.

Dry fingers turn the golden paper,
avoiding well plastered edges,
peels the bottom slowly. The fresh book
sits in hand glossy-cold from winter metal.
Her name inscribed inside the cover
appears alien and incomplete.

She is anxious and wary,
begins feeding lines to her head--
none making sense twisting sideways
and upright from crisp ink. They
always start this way, fractured
jagged. She returns for more, same results.

Her feet stir beneath her, inching
to repeat failed attempts once more;
only aloud does it all meld, these manic
stricken lines, these cold pressed moments
of cynical silence and echoed ego.

The cat follows paces behind,
sits when she halts, wants to give
her his downy white belly in submission,
but looks on with caution at her lips
moving, persistent to capture rhythm.
He waits for the turn of the page,
waits for her stillness, if it comes.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea) 12/09

If under other circumstances we meet again

2010-11-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

for Brad Burjan

Life is a helix, which we never grasp,
but strangely trace in the air with fingertips;
nails bitten to the quick unconsciously.

We run its track faithful
of some ending to strung out nights
and reclusive days, the tread of our soles
worn thinner in successive heel-toe combinations.

The crossing over from eight to infinity is nothing greater
than an angle of loops moved to reclining
on the divan; inhibitions release like smoke,
one mad eye watching our endless struggle
in paralyzed freedom.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Publishes by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea)

Between Wales and NY, a conversation

2010-11-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

For David E. Oprava

Waiting
for time and god
to show me,
it is all the same
in the end.

Here, without regret,
man quietly steals
all the words
from my mouth.

Sweet morsels lifted,
tip of tongue
emptied onto a passing
universe, deconstructed.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea) 12/09

Dies Illa

2010-11-08T15:02:00.000-05:00

(after Tammy Foster Brewer)

Yes, I was HER—
that girl stuffed into a mold
too small, her mind convinced
her expanse greater than the plains.

          I lived a double life (life). The secret
          second binging on food with room lock latched.
          The contraband of my desire slowly rotting
          under
          the bed .

It would go down easy at first,
a slow trickle and burn like a first kiss
that turns to bite you bloody in the end; I’d
force it in then, damage done, to bury it into
a stomach s t r e t c h e d to limit. The void
still gapping in the dusk of teenage summers.

                            There I am naked with the mirror
                            my enemy; shadows mock flesh and curve.

           Mouth full.
           Tears avenge cheeks
           with hate
           found in every inch of reflection.

           Breasts uneven (imperfect)
           Arms doughy (imperfect)
          Waist full and hips thick (imperfect)
           Legs less than feminine (imperfect)

I am unrecognizable.
There are several shades of disgust
gathering on my tongue, none of which would stand
up for me if called upon. They’d laugh outside
courtroom doors, snide and perfectly jaded, feeding
the illusion of perfect to me one dainty morsel at a time.

When it is all swallowed (soul and all)
and the Lacrimosa is on its final string,
I cover up my discretions and pretend to be normal.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea) 12/09

My mother always warned me

2010-11-07T22:53:00.000-05:00

For Mark Hartenbach

I.

You are a secret
kept under a shell,
the magician’s three-card
folly giving everything, but nothing;
marks on the page as close as one will ever get.

II.

Your body poses a calculated confidence,
more intellect driven than ego ridden,
but my mother always warned me,
the bigger the bark, the smaller the man.

III.

You reek of ebb and flow,
a stream of consciousness
making jagged ripples in the lake’s glass,
only reaching dry land once in several moons,
a solitary boatman without oars,
cynicism and defense easy on the tongue.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea) 12/09

Bathymetric (Building a Tsunami)

2010-11-07T22:48:00.001-05:00

For Dan

Hot water illuminates invisible
markings on my rib bones
left by the grip of your hands.

There is a faint outline of your lips
on the pink swell of my breast
and a silver-shadowed trail as your tongue
leads you to worlds unknown.

It is the heat that raises the memory,
my arms taut behind me, gripping thighs
as if my life depends upon it; hips thrusting
forward and hair disheveled while you
elevate me in soft flickering light.

It is the heat that sews the sound of your voice
into my skin in the darkness of these nights.
We connect like tender filaments in thin glass,
joined tentatively, transferring arced energy.

We've become inventors and explorers
sailing in the ocean of uncertainty, words
you know so much about, and each
with sights set on lands and time of snow

where the imprints of our bodies
make angels in the powder and the drawback
no less impressive when glaciers fall into warm seas.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by erbacce (Blood at the Chelsea) 12/09

Pariaman, no more

2010-11-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

For Sumatra

The mosque’s minaret
has succumbed to the earth
as she swallows whole
villages in her muddy mouth.

A great underground
t h u n d e r erupts cascades
of rock and thick mud,
envelops a wedding party

at the foothills of the bride’s
childhood home. Her most
precious union sealed in darkness,
her unborn children, myths once again.

Those that still roam find
hands petrified up from the land
like human plants searching
for sun. The dead are carved

from clay by villagers, culled
today only to be replaced
from whence they came
with a prayer for the sending.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Sugar Mule 11/09

The place we connect with the earth

2010-11-07T22:35:00.000-05:00

I sit fascinated by the tenderness
in his voice as he speaks, imbibing
the curve of a woman's foot
with languid fantasy.

                         the arch is ivory silk
                         with feathered creases
                         to be lost in

His language a confabulation of hushed
words that lick all the angles turned
by her heel hanging over the bed's edge;
his smile overwhelms me.

                         heart strings plucked
                         with the simple curl
                         of her painted pink toes

Pleasure hangs on his lips like an epoch,
hands caress the solid air as if her foot
existed beneath his delicate fingers, as if
he could smell the jasmine lotion on her skin.

                          I slide my striped sock
                          over ankle, toe and heel.
                          I want him to tell my soul
                                                            what
                                                               matters.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Sugar Mule 11/09

White Noise

2010-11-07T22:27:00.001-05:00

What does one do when haunted
by the white noise of your body?
Long hours alone with riffled papers,
fingers tapping lightly on the desk,
a heaved sigh at banality and its
mere existence in the world.

Each sound laden with its own emotional
consequence and reference that is not
easily distilled; the process
of evaporation requiring more heat
than this chill will consent to.

The whisper the pencil makes
moving dutifully across the page
is an act of love; it captures
the abstract notion in amber
to be discovered in a farther place
and time, but not here, not now,

and all that is spoken about luck
boils down to how far your heart
is willing to open and for how long.
There is no luck in love, only change
and discovery and rekindled fires.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Sugar Mule 11/09

Pan/dora

2010-11-07T22:22:00.001-05:00

Skylight angled at forty-five
degrees, restless moon
haunting the rims of wood
sparkling off kitchen steel
and everyday glass,
awaiting a simple gesture.

The
cupboard
opens

and closes to something
magical and romantic, a ripe
Pandora's box without
the stardust and chaos,
but with leaned words
laced in fragrant pollens.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Sugar Mule 11/09

Dan tian

2010-11-07T22:16:00.001-05:00

The old Chinese woman
does Qigong on the sidewalk
that slopes downward
like a gentle rolling hill.
She is a graceful crane
with a shock of white hair
and face stolid in morning light.

I stand by the mailbox
listening to the voice from her radio
give instruction in Mandarin
between the crackles of airwave
silence. There was a time
when my feet were planted
in grass, unwavering and calm.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Sugar Mule 11/09

Chasing Tales

2010-11-07T22:12:00.001-05:00

I have found many four-leaf clovers
on the banks of this dyke.
The creek never rises high enough
to prove its worth, and maybe,
we are lucky for that; this land
was once burdened with floods.

It is hard to think here, as if nature
won’t allow it amidst water tumbling
over rocks; the sounds of fall crickets;
birds calling out for saving. Monarchs
and Paper Whites dance against

this unusually blue day while ruby
dragonflies hum like ghosts. But the city
is not too far off, its sounds ply
into this bubble I have built around me—
enough to distract me; I think of how sad
your voice was on the phone, solitary and distant.

You reassure me it is not the state of us,
only life in general. Your head full of reasoning—
trying to sort your place in the world,
running ragged in a circle as only philosophy can do.
I tell you we might never really know why.

You say it must be out there somewhere.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Red Fez, Small Press Editors Edition

My Town

2010-11-07T22:08:00.001-05:00

My town has given up
on God and Love,
in that order.

The shelves at the thrift
store are filled with lost
affection, lost inspiration.

Their pockets fill deep
with trinkets and baubles
worn with the age of many owners
and they believe it will mask

despair in the face of a failing
community. We covet false
promises like gold in my town.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published in Alligator Stew (print) 12/09

The Folk House

2010-11-07T22:04:00.001-05:00

I.

Rusted bars creak when your right hand pushes open the gate,
your other, warm and firm in the valley of my back; a gentleman
of the first degree. The gesture at once quickens my heart.

We laugh nervously in the long, dark corridor with its catacomb
silence, and my clicking heels on the Spanish tile ring loud.
The walls rough beneath my fingers, an earthen Braille,
its beauty only grasped in this temporary blindness.

The tunnel opens easily into a courtyard, wooden trellis crowned
and dripping with wisteria, the color reminds me of the lilac still in my hair,
plucked deviously from a stranger's tree, when you said you'd never smelled it.

II.

I listen to the lilt of your voice making small talk, letting you go on,
knowing very well that you hate it, but you sense it will draw me out into this night;
this first mingling in the world without being caught inside the box.

We smoke, inhaling deep the clouded sky heavy with complaint,
the flower’s mixed perfumes, the chatter of friends, and the lingering smell
of our excitement, still fresh on the skin. I look up as the first drops descend,

the stars distant memories tonight; my life changes with each breath,
so fast I am spinning, and then all is quiet: your voice, the city, the people,
and I catch you watching me, smile spreading like a disease.

III.

You let me hold your hand beneath the table, the room lit
with white Christmas strands around the makeshift stage
and the whisper of coup de foudre taking my breath by surprise.

Closer, fire dances in votives by way of ghosts let in
through the high window, making kaleidoscope women behind
the soft brown bottles of Weston's, sweating rings onto the tabletop,
as the singer's voice shocks the air around us all.

We are captured in the church of his piano,
his voice the heaven we can't bring ourselves to believe exists,
and when he reaches the pinnacle, there is silence.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Writer's Bloc, Issue 6, 12/09

A Quiet Learning Curve by Aleathia Drehmer and Dan Provost

2010-09-19T22:53:00.000-05:00

Aleathia Drehmer and Dan Provost’s shared collection of poetry called “A Quiet Learning Curve” published by Rank Stranger Press is now available to order. This book is 48 pages of poetry that dips into each person’s quiet moments of thinking and astute observations of the world. It is sometimes somber and then funny, contemplative and silently optimistic.

The book is perfect bound and costs $10. Shipping in the USA is $2 and shipping for most international destinations is $4. Ordering information is as follows:

To order a book from Aleathia Drehmer—

Send $10 plus shipping as well concealed cash, check, or money order to:

Aleathia Drehmer
PO Box 282
Painted Post, NY 14870

or for Pay Pal go to “send money” and use the email windwitch27@yahoo.com (please be sure to include a shipping address and the word “curve”)

To order a book from Dan Provost—

Send $10 plus shipping as well concealed cash, check, or money order to:

Dan Provost
14 Watson Ave
Worcester, MA 01606

(PayPal account information available upon request)

Thank you for your interest and your support.

Sincerely,

Aleathia Drehmer and Dan Provost

Interstate

2010-08-26T09:21:00.000-05:00

The sky is rains starlings
in maize flecks and iridescent
ebony cascade with wings s p a n n e d and diving
Kama
kazi
from verdant rectangles, hinged on steel arms.

Signs mislead us, driving into
twilighted spring winds
feeling devoured
like fat worms after rains, flesh
and grit pierced with golden barbs, easily.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

It is only one pebble tossed

2010-08-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

For Amelia

The matriarch died in a flooding
of the world; she ruled
hearts and faces into
sunbeams,

molded the consciousness of children
in her disappointment,
fixed tears under shy smiles
with the smell from her blouse
as they buried faces
into it.

A child calls out, “I
can’t breathe” and we know
the psalm of her heart washes over
engorged banks of rivers,
night merging
lost dreams of others,

collecting its own story on the journey.
Release,
and again into the torrents
of blackness,
fireflies light the way
over muddy waters.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

Thinking of Sea Trees at Sunset

2010-08-24T23:53:00.001-05:00

Small white pills

trick the body out of her fertility--
give her false impressions
of eggs growing life,
cells dividing from the combination
of double helix DNA
swimming in the heat of her core.

Breasts swell forming a mother's cleft,
the weight of them
an implication to nourish;
muscles relax through the hips
anticipating the burden of travel
from one world to another.

And sleep covets her entirely
to protect them both from transformation,
building bones and lashes and teeth;
fingers sprouting like blades of grass;
heart beating as if a hiccup,
no more than a flutter beneath the skin.

Then the last pill, small and blue,
laughs heartily at this joke of creation,
the simplistic human need to populate,
and undergo masterpieces
of flesh and magic.

Life
falls
down
in the gravity of death,
held firm in its change,
and what's left is a river of vermilion
between supple thighs.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

Lost Identity (after Paul Blackburn)

2010-08-24T23:02:00.001-05:00

We get windfalls of strength
that prove to be more
                             valuable
than money and fame.

Time spent choosing braided ropes
of morality and conviction,
                                the core
that holds a personality erect

wears thinner with age,
morphs into a larger
                                meaning
loved ones rarely understand.

Pride is on the line and vulnerable,
so thin and trepidacious-ly
                                 walked
that we don’t know how it will ever recover.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

By the Tail

2010-08-24T22:53:00.001-05:00

She is the definition
of a situation gone wrong—
body filled with sleeping pills,
Morphine and Motrin, enough
to stop organs in their tracks;
arms laden with horse
on a late night death ride
into the blackest sky she’d ever see.

30 minutes down, rocking
in the arms of Grim, kissed
by his poisonous tongue when she
sees the pin-prick lights cascading
into beaming fluorescent floods.
Faces around her bleed awe
at what they have returned,
an unwilling body and a brain
left to a fate worse than death,
worse than the life she was leaving.

Time steals sinew and fat
until she is little more than the living
dead with pinched blue eyes
perpetually angry and frightened,
teeth gnashing involuntarily, limbs
contracted like bird wings.

She is alive in a wasting body,
a prisoner of her own design,
and I want to take her picture
to show my daughter what happens
when the devil has you by the tail;
when you think you are invincible,
only to realize there is no such thing.
There is only luck, and luck run dry.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

A letter to a real friend

2010-08-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

For Lynn

It is hard to take the truth
delivered at point blank range
like a bullet ripping through
                   the
                  3rd
                    I
even harder to hold back defenses
boiling beneath the surface,
sharp-toothed and hungry.

My disappointment,
                            dipped
in self-pity on the end of her blunt
                              t
                                i
                                 p
                                   p
                                    e
                                      d sword,
lets me know I have spent too long
in the land of the deaf with all that ego
stuffed between my ears, that above all else,
I stopped listening and therefore stopped learning.

Sometimes,
it is hard to take the truth.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

Surfeited

2010-08-24T22:31:00.001-05:00

Morning found me
in a round of alarms
each softer than the last
with gray

light through window-
pain, cloud trails white
as jasmine petals
tucked behind

ear and smile. Form
rising; flesh warmed in
cotton given no hope
             of imitating
                  previous nor
                      replicating
                            the future.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09

The Machine

2010-06-23T22:31:00.000-05:00

Punja looked over the well-browned backs of his fellow workers. The processes of their spines made them look like great tortoises shined with human oil and sweat. The bodies of the men moved with an un-discussed synchronicity as hundreds of pick axes connected to stone simultaneously. It was a thunderous sound at first that made Punja’s ears feel as if they might bleed, but over time—day after day after day—it became a heartbeat that drove each of them without knowing it. Arms swung over their heads in unison, arms vibrated with the contact, palms stung with pain until they were numb, and they all inhaled like a great solar wind before beginning again.

Each of them had committed some crime against the ruling power; some could not muster living a mendacious life style that supported the rich few and drown the masses in unequal rights and poverty. They could not live in that place and pray to their gods feeling clean. Punja had abjured the government and now he was in this labor camp, most likely until he died, just like the rest of them.

He thought about knowledge as he swung his axe. He thought about its power to unleash fear in those who lacked it. He thought of the uprising that could take place if everyone were allowed an education, and how that would never happen. The government knew the ignorant and hungry and poor were easily manipulated by the fear of losing what little they already had.

Punja had spoke on the dirty, crowded street corners of the city about these things. He talked and shouted until his voice was no more than a harsh, inaudible breath. He now missed those moments when his people moved like a swarm of bees in the hive crawling all over each other, the low buzz of their movements, the smell of curry and cardamom and tea, and the children’s laughter despite their empty bellies; these instances when the universe lifted him out of his body to look at it all from above—to show him the subjects of his life’s mission.

He remembered these moments like a sylph passing by electrifying his every nerve. He remembered them as his back ached, as his arms burned, and his head pounded from dehydration.

He was lost now in the last conversation he had ever had with another. A young girl had heard him yelling on the street and tugged on his dust covered pants. He stopped mid sentence and looked down at her. She was drowning in a sea of legs as they passed by, so he bent closer to hear her tiny voice. She asked him what it all meant, all his words of education and knowledge. Punja squatted on his heels in silence, really thinking of the best thing he could leave her, something she could understand.

She waited with eyes wide, lips parted showing her fragile teeth, and gently placed her tiny hand upon his cheek as his head hung there in contemplation. He slowly raised his head and opened his eyes, heart more full than it had ever been as he sifted a great lesson from the Talmud out of his brain that he had once read. He told the young girl—“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.”

The girl smiled at him and nodded, but did not say anything. She put her hands together in front of her heart and bowed slightly backing into the wave of pedestrians until she was carried away by its undulation. Punja sat on his haunches for a long time tasting that truth. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested and sentenced without trial. Now, he was part of the masses again, part of the fearful, part of the voiceless sea, and he felt empty and hopeless.

Punja stood up right then breaking the smooth machine, removing the sound of his axe from the song of the laborers. He heard shouts from the overseer, but he did not move. Punja stood there as they whipped him; stood there as his back trickled blood rivers; stood there while pain transmuted to elation; stood there as the machine stopped all together and the only sounds that could be heard were the leather against his skin and his voice crying—“Grow, grow.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Eclectic Flash, Print Anthology 1

Ingrid

2010-06-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

She glowed in the pale light
of nothing. Her hand attached
to darkness and in the abyss
in front of her was Malik.

His skin was darker than nothing
and her hand laced in his
made her feel like a ghost.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Right Hand Pointing Issue 29

The world will not note what we say

2010-02-28T00:14:00.000-05:00

For Dylan

I have strangeness tattooed
across my Gettysburg address.

I have a proclamation
that needs emancipation.

I have slavery hidden
under my eyelids.

I have an underground railroad
running through my brain.

I have bums swaying
from the rod of my existence.

I have a jagged soul hooked
on the meanderings of a hobo-nation.

I have wandered into a field
of sleep where I never rest.

I have been arrested
for possession of a heart too big.

I have been told the devil
has eleven points against me.

I have taken that which makes me small.

I have in my pocket that which makes me tall.

I have under a black hat
a fear of a black cat.

I have strangeness tattooed
across my Gettysburg address.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Hobo Camp Review, Fall Issue 2009

Year One

2010-02-28T00:07:00.001-05:00

You dragged the mattress into the living room,

citing how insomnia has crept into every Sunday
of your life and how white noise somehow
soothes the beasts in your head
to rest, just enough to sleep.

At first I felt internally resistant, struggling
with lights flashing in pixilated repetition
around the dark room, each sound
from the television a knife
running along my nerves.

I felt your body crawl over mine, listened as you
placed “We Were Soldiers” into the tray of the player,
and then settle down beside me again.
I lay there still resisting the noise,
but as it continued, I softened.

We watched the first major conflict in the Vietnam war
and sorrow rolled down my cheeks silently
as young men took their deaths so afraid
and unsure, knowing this was once my father
in Vietnam and your father in Korea.

So there we lay on our anniversary, bodies locked
together in something deeper than we could
have imagined a year ago, I could have never
been born pounded through me as you
wiped tears and allowed my heart

to break, understanding
the repercussions
of war torn
childhoods.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Burning Shore Review 11/09

Spaghetti for Dinner

2010-02-28T00:02:00.001-05:00

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“God damn it Bean, what the fucking hell is your problem?” Jed yelled as Bean lunged at him, both of her clenched fists raised in his face, covered in rich earth with bundles of thyme gripped in her hands. The smell of it made him hungry despite the savage look in her eyes and he almost asked her if she were going to make tomato sauce tonight, but thought better of it.

“I am going to kill you Jed. Gut you like a god damned pig on the altar. Do you hear me? Do you have that registered in your thick good for nothing skull?”

Jed backed up from Bean as she advanced on him. He had no idea why she was frothing at the mouth and waving Italian herbs in his face, but he could tell she was adamant about something. She had a ripe old bee in her bonnet.

Bean moved closer and closer and she could feel her own heart beating out of her chest in rage. That flea bag dog of his had dug up her herb garden again and shit all over her sage. She had had enough of it. She had warned him time and again and she couldn’t take no more. Bean could feel her hair plastered to her forehead, could feel the flush in her cheeks like hot slaps to the face. She hurled the thyme at him from across the room.

“Your bastard dog has done it again Jed. Where is he? I am going to skin him alive and leave his still shaking carcass on the seat of your precious pick-up!!”

Jed, not knowing what else he could do but get out of dodge, ran up the stairs and hid in one of the bedrooms. This was a cowardly thing to do, he thought to himself, but when Bean got this mad there was nothing else you could do but disappear and hope she settled back into sanity. But this time, his cowardice enraged her even more. He could hear her heavy footfalls on the stairs coming after him.

Bean started opening doors in the upstairs looking for the lame husband she continued to carry around her neck like a millstone. The first room was empty and dark, and she listened for the sound of his breathing in the absence of light. When she was satisfied Jed wasn’t in there, she closed the door with a loud bang to let him know she was coming for him.

She opened the second door and her three children screamed in unison as the light from the opening spanned across their huddled shapes in the corner. Bean noticed how small and curled they were and for a moment her heart softened at their tiny limbs, at their flexibility, at their golden hair hanging gingerly over their eyes, and how they clutched each other in fear. She would not stay in this moment long, because each of them had his nose and the sight of it reminded her of her hunt. She had a fox to find.

Jed could hear Bean outside the door, listened as her muddy hands slipped on the glass doorknob, and knew he was in for it. Bean relished the click and release of the door’s mechanism and swung the door open slowly. It hit the bedroom wall with a dull thud. Backlit in the center of the room stood Jed. His chest was heaving and she could see the tremor of his fingers as he held them out in front of him as a barrier to her wrath.

She advanced towards him and all Jed could concentrate on was the fact that her breasts quaked like omelets too hastily turned and how it would be nice if she wore a bra once in awhile, and how nice it might be between them if she cared about herself a little more. He was so lost in this thought about her drooping tits that he didn’t see her raise the shovel until it was too late. The steel spade echoed in his head before he lost consciousness.

“Get up motherfucker and take it like a man.” Bean yelled, but Jed didn’t move. She got down close to his face to feel his breath on her ear, but did not bask his hot, sick wind. His eyes were stuck open with horror and shock. Bean stood up and the shovel fell from her fingers with a clanging.

“God damn dog,” she muttered.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Zygote in my Coffee Online Issue #128, 2009

The Scene of the Crime

2010-02-27T23:57:00.001-05:00

I saw myself as I must

have been these last 10 years,
cold and alone, while lying on
the Mexican blanket listening to old tyme
fiddlers jamming in the far tent;

he rose from the makeshift bed, not knowing
that woman, never having the opportunity
to see her on his weekend jaunts to the country
when she was always on her best behavior.

And there it stood in the air between us,
a small firm command with no hint of malice
that stiffened his shoulders and furrowed my brow.
Silence followed as we abandoned the sea
stitched in green and white, opting
for places of stolid separation.

Strings from the banjo and double bass
tuned in the summer air and old folks
gathered closer to hear endearing songs
from youths long gone. I felt inexplicably
ugly in the face of tenderness; always
pushing and pushing until bridges
collapse and I’ve no way home.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Asphodel Madness 10/09

Saints in Waiting

2010-02-27T23:49:00.002-05:00

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
as I lay my hand on his arm.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Poet Plant Press in the anthology "Workbook", 2009

This is a holy spectacle

2010-02-27T23:40:00.001-05:00

We bake our bodies

in Missoura night heat; five hours
holding up the word at our fingertips,
sitting in pews sweating in the name
of our lord, laying hands on outlaw bibles
and underground books of the apostles.

This is a holy spectacle.

And when the preacher finds us
redeemed, he stands at the pulpit
until it grows dark, closing the good book
and ushering us into the thickness
of the south, into realms of plain faced hookers
and gay bars and low-slung rides
creeping slow under golden arches.

This is a holy spectacle.

Standing there, all I can think about
are sloth, gluttony and greed. My sins
coveting the isolation of a cheap hotel room
with air conditioning that lulls me to sleep,
filtering out the migratory death
on the streets. I want to be transported
from how aged I feel.

This is a holy spectacle.

Linwood is empty now after one a.m.
and we jay walk without looking, rebel
drips of molasses down the side of a jar,
and casually listen to ambulances chase
down the night under a bone white moon
under oppression
under heat
under the belt of having to remember
it all in the morning. My thoughts keep
rushing back to the angry blisters
on the souls of my feet, heels clicking
prayers on the concrete that each step
will get me closer to my destination.

This, is a holy spectacle.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Lung, Issue One, 9/09

The Bard's Shirt

2010-02-27T23:18:00.001-05:00

It is stained with organic ginger beer

near the buttons, a faded dribble
that leapt from loose lips that acted as anchors.

Saffron edges curl at the neck,
a blessing from the Rinpoche
with vows taken to live in the middle.

In the glass, the cream linen
lies old and nearly transparent
against the contrast of hot skin

steeped in the shower, nipples
colored like berries in summer,
flat beneath the fabric.

Pleased, I stare at myself
and begin to think, if I were a man,
would I like this kind of mystery?

An almost tangible outline of breast,
the sternum’s valley cast in shadow,
thoughts about the skin’s smell,

its taste upon the tongue, and then
deny it to myself, grinning, knowing
the imagination depends on what

cannot be seen.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Callused Hands, Issue 9, 8/09

Thin Freedoms

2010-02-27T23:14:00.000-05:00

The room is gray,

every shade of shadow
a woman can find in a man
present and accounted for.
Sanity questioned in this light,
moral deviations heavier
than imagined, and backsliding
the easiest mode of transport.

Lines in the skin of her hand
show her true age, so wide
they could be filled with concrete
mixed by the light of these blank walls.

She thinks it would keep them
out of trouble. They have a mind
of their own, make her pay generously
for thin freedoms.

Such a word
never perches
on the lips for long.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Brainbox Press in the print anthology "Holy Spectacles!" 8/09

Why it's good to have a place called home

2009-12-06T21:06:00.000-05:00

They let the apartments go this spring,

let contorted eaves remain untouched
after the cataclysm of high winds
destroyed everything like the monstrous
tangle of Medusa's coil.

Swallows arrive en mass building nests
in fissured awnings and on the flat-topped lights
above our green doors. The noise astounds me,
the screeching birds explode at once from their fresh columbary.

A robin's head pops above the hem
of uncut grass, hunting fat worms in early dew,
riffling wishes from dandelions
and liberating them into the hazy morning.

The parking lot is empty now,
the business men off to lofty glass houses,
stones rattle in the pockets of their gray suits.
They will sit behind sleek, mahogany desks

with the view of the valley unencumbered,
but they'll never have the time or cause
to enjoy it with phones fixed to their ears
and a false assurance in the nod of their heads.

I sit on the curb in the crest
of the circle at ground level
and witness everything missed
on a daily basis--

bird shit and gravel, sun glinting
off the stop sign, jet trails in the blue
and the far off sound of trains on track
that complete this garden utopia
just on the wood's edge.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Creekwalker 7/09

Messier 35

2009-12-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

For Beto

You recall the memory for me about when your hands
were covered with purple earth, when you cut
your mother's existence into the canvas,
a blossoming repetition you couldn't explain.

Helio came in, unfolded his celestial compass onto the floor;
heavens strewn across the earth almost as amazing as in sky,
and he tells you she is here. A long, slender finger pointing
to a bundle of stars; She is sitting at the foot of Gemini.

And still,
you can feel her hand upon you,
her fingers lightly touching your hair.

You tell this moment with glorified innocence,
taking sun with a tortoise and a dog,
hummingbirds hovering over your face, unafraid and close,
their jeweled bodies reflecting onto oiled skin.

In my winter, I consider how time is the ultimate master;
ordering light at one end of an arm, darkness at the other.
His fingertips great magnets moving worlds
separately until converged in one.

I imagine you lying there on baked earth,
your dark hand resting on the turtle's rough shell,
the dog panting softly in your ear, with birds in your eyes.

You are St. Francis of Assisi calling them,
waiting for the solemn whisper of night
to return your mother home.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008
Published by Creekwalker 7/09

He is sending me into the sea

2009-12-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

On the water’s edge, where foam

kisses sand and sea glass nestles
between kelp and littered mollusks
until high tide takes their surrender,
he screams into the ocean.

Bottled anger and demon sadness
that is touched with love releases
and scares leery bystanders
up the near empty winter beach;
they scatter like clouds
along the gray horizon.

Winds cut sharply into his face,
tears frozen thick enough
to bore through, memories of warm
hands ice fish into his core,
leaving him somehow less numb
and more human than before.

Salted waves lap against sneakers,
toes getting wet with the beginning
of life and the end of life,
as he gently gathers shells in hand
to give as smiles in another time.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Creekwalker 7/09

The Funeral March

2009-12-06T20:50:00.000-05:00

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
Published by Creekwalker 7/09

White Lies

2009-12-06T12:56:00.000-05:00

I take the left fork

in the trail to avoid disappointment
and only light my secret
once I have passed the surge
of buttercups on the fringe. I like
to smoke sometimes, but can’t bear
what she would say if she knew.

Up here, the air is ten degrees cooler
and the trail’s edge is littered
with thick tufts of carpet bugle,
and climbing roses strangle the underbrush.
It is cut throat here; they stand on top
of each other for sustenance—reaching
their thorns across a sweet honeysuckle’s
face, bleeding her pale and withered.
One can barely discern where raspberries
begin and roses end, both fruitless now.

Near the end of the paved path
there is a hole in the branches web,
the red of Canadian Columbine catches
my eye as birds dart through for cover.
I am a stranger, upright and un-feathered,
and they call warnings I do not heed.

I am swallowed by conflictions in nature
and the smell of tobacco burning between
my fingers, remembering that she still tells people
how she caught me smoking last summer, just
that once, and it was a mistake.

So now the taste has gone bad, fetid and dirty
in my mouth, head swimming from its rush,
and heart tripping like a hammer. I snub it out
on the concrete before descending back into humidity
and neatly shorn lawns and cookie cutter
buildings, back into reality.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Creekwalker 7/09

Jesus doesn't have a woodshop

2009-12-06T12:52:00.000-05:00

you want that built in baby

the girl that fawns all over you,
washes your clothes
and fixes your meals.

you want that built in vixen
to lead you to the bedroom
and shove you down on the sheets,
climb aboard and be the captain of you.

you want that built in little girl,
with her sweet smile
and coquettish eyes that beg you
to save her soul from the world.

you want that built in woman,
the one that navigates the sea
without a lighthouse, without a flare
and finds shore every time.

she doesn't live here
she doesn't exist here
she doesn't want to be
the craft of your hand.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Gutter Eloquence 5/09

Reasons for Not Sitting Still

2009-12-06T12:47:00.001-05:00

“If I had the stars of the darkest night…”

--Bob Dylan

I sat down with good intensions
of writing a letter to my father
to tell him about my life, right now,
but lingered in the fact that it always
feels like a quarterly business report;
a laundry list of happenings he won’t
ever be a part of, special moments
never returned. I think about a poem

written by a friend darning losses
of important men: fathers and uncles
and brothers. And I wonder if your own
disappearance in the end will fill me
with regret, or worse yet, will I know
how to mourn something I never had.

Summer is lurking around spring’s
short corner, and the evening sings
with trains, smells of honeysuckle
and newly shorn grass; a few escaped
dandelions that survived the blades,
wave in the light breeze. I feel
ten years old—bewildered and curious
by your existence, wanting to have enough
strength to bridge this gap, to swing
on the stars of this night hoping for words
that rarely come. I am surprised how
my well runs dry and my tongue falls
mute in your presence.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Not From Here, Are You? 6/09

Apartment 22

2009-12-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

Jorge climbed the stairs of the tenement apartment building whose walls were as thin as whispers, and he heard snippets of each family’s life as he ascended the stairwell. His feet made the worn wood bow slightly and they groaned and creaked for no one. The hallways were dark and scattered with mouse droppings, smelled of decay. Garbage cluttered the corners and broken toys lay on dirty floor like orphans.

The death of sounds was common here. No one cared where they went or who made them unless it disturbed their sleeping habits. It wasn’t uncommon to eat lunch to the sound of gunfire or hang the clothes in the apartment to dry, listening to the sound of fists contacting a face. He lamented the fact that this life had taken away their compassion and left them numb to atrocities in their own backyards. But this was what he could afford on his meager pension from the mill. He could do no better than this and it made him hang his head slightly.

On the fourth floor, he stopped. From apartment 22 came a noise he was not accustomed to hearing. It drew him closer to the door with its peeling burgundy paint and lopsided, black metal numbers. It was music. It was tender and passionate and he hovered at the door silently, aware of the space around his body as it filled with warmth at his own excitement. He leaned in with his ear pressed to the jamb forgetting about the building’s filth, forgetting that many would sooner shoot you than look at you if you came close to their doors, but he could not draw away….not yet.

Jorge placed his hand against the beveled wooden face of the door. He held his breathe to not miss a sound. He felt as if his entire body were set afire right there in the dank hall. He felt his cock twinge between his legs at these sounds. He felt like a man for the first time in many years, thought about his youth and how he spent many nights with women clutched in his arms, sliding deep into them, enjoying the musk of their bodies and how their mouths let out the music of their sex. Those were good times. They were nothing now.

Notes escaped from the cracks around the door spilling into the stale, heavy air of the hallway. They were sweet melodic effluvia that danced in the air, kissing his face, and Jorge knew at once it was a woodwind. He listened carefully as the woman, yes….he was sure it was a woman playing, blew into the instrument. It is a flute, he thought.

He imagined the delicious pucker of her lips pursed over the curved hole. He heard the deftness of her fingers as the padded keys brushed down onto the silver body covering the holes where air would stretch into music. He could hear the sole of her shoe lightly tapping on the hardwood and imagined her graceful neck and slender fingers. Jorge closed his eyes and drank her music imagining the swell of her breasts as she inhaled to put strength behind the notes. He wondered what it would be like to run his hand up her knee while she played a melody for him, just for him.

His body betrayed him with its mind of its own. His skin was warm and his face flushed. Jorge felt himself tremor all over and noticed he was hard as a stone and standing like a lecherous old man at some young girl’s door, when the landlord lumbered up the stairs and saw him there. Jorge could tell she was drunk, could smell her from the top of the stairs where she stood holding herself up on the railing. She had a devious look. She was a devil.

“What the hell are you doing there?”

“Nothing…eh…nothing ma’am.” Jorge said looking away.

“By the looks of the party in your pants, it does not look like you were doing nothing Jorge. You’re a dirty old man leaning against the door, huddled in the corner stroking yourself like a peeping Tom. I should kick you out, or better yet post your sad face in the lobby as a pervert, but you pay on time so I will just remember this. You will owe me big time,” the landlord scolded him like a child.

“I am going now, up to my apartment. I am sorry. I didn’t mean anything. The music put me in a trance.” Jorge tried to explain, but the landlord just looked at his pants with a grin of a wolf. She licked her lips and smiled showing her poorly kept teeth, released another wave of her pickled insides into the air for him to choke on. Jorge looked down to see the pleats of his trousers tented like the pants of a young man and a wet spot forming there like a lewd death for everyone to see.

Jorge felt his excitement fade and wished his cock would shrivel back to its cotton grave. He wanted nothing to do with this weak excuse for a woman. She was wasted in more ways than one. He wanted the dove behind the door, wanted to kiss her skin and please her….take her from this wretched place, but he said nothing more as he looked at the door again.

He hung his head as he walked past the landlord avoiding her intensions. Now he would never know her beauty. Jorge reluctantly left the woman of his dreams with her music and her body of grace and her answer to the reawakening of his heart and trudged past more death to his own.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Not From Here, Are You? 6/09

The Sadist

2009-12-06T10:57:00.000-05:00

Little cuts under the cuticle,

nail beds bleeding
imperceptible to anyone
except you, and sparingly
you’d lash me outright.

The welts raised and angry
and I would think I needed
secret degradations to grow,
couldn’t fathom them as malicious.

All the while
whispering to myself,
I deserved that one.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009
Published by Gutter Eloquence 5/09

Jesus has dancing girls

2009-12-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

Jesus, has dancing girls

and cheesy used car salesmen
in his godly employ.

“Listen here folks,” Cadillac man says
on center stage with heavenly gyrating nymphs,
“Jesus loves YOU more than your parents,
more than your children,
even more than your spouse.”

My husband looks at me, sideways glance,
eyebrow raised as if to inquire
about my extra-marital affairs,

“With Jesus?” I reply out loud
laughing wildly, “Most definitely.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2006
Published by MUST (print) 5/09

Faces of Old Men

2009-12-06T10:50:00.000-05:00

Cultural smells threaten the air

with temptations creating
a hostile war zone in my gut
as I run my fingers along
spiked iron bars confiscated by rust
beneath the surface, chipping
away at the infrastructure.

The tepid water sprayed
from the green hose wets my arm,
skin reaching and pulling
towards petals imprisoned in spaces
between rectangles, trapped
in two-dimensional skirts
of fabric tragically shapeless.

The sound of tread
from two wheels and four
kissing the pavement,
dissolves into beats of bass
that push shoulders back
and cock arms stiff
in a show of cool.

Leather faces, imparted
with yellow smiles, gaps in the mouth
letting the world enter of its own
accord, letting tongues slip
through as if made of ocean salt
pushing through ragged coral,
only to be wiped clean
by the hands of age and sun.

I am an illegal alien
with a swelling in the core,
taken by realities, unfolding
inside myself, watching
the transformation of
the human condition
in smiles and eyes.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Literary Mary in "Don't Call Me Plath" 5/09

How to save a life

2009-12-06T10:45:00.000-05:00

You tell me you love me
under the spotlight of a small gooseneck reading lamp.
I feel you crawl onto the crisp sheets,
bed dipping under your weight as you
settle in beside me and whisper my name.
I roll over from my book feeling the heat
from your skin burn me, the look on your face
nearly as intense, and enough to make me hold my breath.

I feel your heart beating furiously on my elbow
as if some piece of your father’s ghost
is trying to keep tempo with sticks worn smoother
than marble. This is a tune he won’t quite catch.

And you speak the words I wasn’t expecting to hear
after such a short time together; my own heart
rushing to the scene of the crime, wanting above all
other things to be able to love you back, to see
the light creep into your eyes whenever I enter the room,
but I can’t be that close to the fire.
I can’t put all of myself into your gentle arms
when I am not worth more than a broken China doll.

Tears roll down the square of thrown light on my cheek,
my mouth betraying its orders, the guardian asleep
at the gate, and I hear them fall into the air knowing
you need to hear me say it, knowing at that moment

my heart
felt the whole of it
burning into us both.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Literary Mary in "Don't Call Me Plath" 5/09

Rivalry

2009-09-12T21:05:00.003-05:00

slept in

awakening to soft sunshine,

silence.

I stretched

moving dreams

from deep in muscles.

Your words linger still, haloed loosely

around ears,

a touch of gold,

a slight of hand,

that

rivals Midas,

for every pound

he’s worth.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by The Cartier Street Review 7/09

Saiyin

2009-09-12T21:02:00.001-05:00

His grandmother yells at him every morning, in a tongue from the old lands of China, before the bus pulls into the circle, and its yellow hull lines them up without being corralled. Defiance marks his face despite his features being on an even playing field and he roars back at her, his tongue not as old, as he reels from her field worn hands. She is exasperated at what this country has done to time tested customs of respect and authority for elders. He baits her until she begins again. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by The Cartier Street Review 7/09

Harbingers

2009-08-16T01:02:00.002-05:00

The darkened room harbors concentric circles

on the hangar's peaked roof,

haloed light circumnavigates

the flying machine's crown.

Bulk metal rectangles pounded

into submission, the blacksmith's sweat

splattered on its walls with each drop

of his hammer, the reverberation echoes still.

Molten angles come together

as conjoined twins in blue fire

still fresh in the welder's eyes,

retinas burning with possibility.

Our shoes clink loudly

as we enter the arched rod canopy,

ancient poles for poisson, hugging

the air and rooted in metal.

The framework holds us all

fast to the dream. We take flight

in quiet overhead breezes

and the hum of shared imaginations.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Munyori Poetry Journal 7/09

A Rebirth of the Sun

2009-08-16T00:51:00.005-05:00

Outside, snow falls in circles. Moons hide. Suns elucidate elsewhere, anywhere but here. The oven warms my hands as I wait for toast to brown, to be covered in butter and strawberry jam; wait for the new fallen snow to be driven from my knuckles. This orange glow shrouds my face in the quiet aching of the kitchen, produces memories I never made, about flames used to molten plastic into burst tears on rough painted papers. Fingertips blistered naming constellations, tongue licking verses of the Gita transmogrifying words into animal brethren, smelling volcanic after emerging out of calculated graphite strokes. Those silver stained insect wings are imprinted into grooved skin, dry and cracked like desert earth, and knowledge lingers. Words give rebirth to art, lost treasures of color web together in universal law with disproportionate dimensions. I am left with stiff fingers and floods of ideas moving slow through mental gorges, once dry. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by Munyori Poetry Journal 7/09

Four Invisible Hands

2009-07-15T23:48:00.001-05:00

Esperanza awoke to the cold dew of a desert night. Sagebrush and Yucca perfume stroked her face and sent a chill down her body. She opened her eyes slightly, just until they were slits and they captured the image of a globe of stars swimming in the ink of the sky. Esperanza took inventory of her limbs slowly; she moved her shoeless feet, driving pains through her hips up to her back. She felt the ground with her fingers and noticed the dry earth was still warm from the day’s sun. She dug the heat with her nails, lodging it underneath, wishing she could pull it over her like a blanket and fall back to sleep, fall into that darkness once more, but the aching in her bones would not cease. Esperanza lay there trying to remember how she came to this place in the desert where no lights flicker except the stars, where the silence was interrupted only by the wind moving devils through the dust. "Yes," she said, "the sea is outside the window. I heard it." I told her, "We don't have a sea, not here in Indiana." She is now feverless, and she dreams of the sea in every moment, night and day. The church has proclaimed God will save this poor girl and Father Amis comes every afternoon to do the saving. He is an expert in sodomy, disguised as ritual saving, and his face becomes luminous when someone says...exorcism. To him, every mind is like a scout knot; the unimportant facts are suppressed and the imperative ones, only vital things, survive. The trivial things merely vibrate the strings of gospel played on harps. "Pass me the bible please. The ancestors suffer inside a person in such a state. They must come out, one way or another." Father Amis says. The crucifix lay in one hand and a tiny bottle of water in the other. Father Amis always holds this transgression to be very special. He keeps score against the devil. "Open up!" He says raising his voice. Through the open window he could only see, in the far away distance, trucks running in the morning mist. Like migratory birds, they came from the north and were never seen again. "I belong to that wave," Esperanza whispers, "now let me go." Esperanza grasps her hand into that of Father Amis. She does not feel safe beside him, but needs to touch his skin for a while. She can taste the ocean in her mouth. Her tongue is a salt flat left when the sun had taken away what she loves the most. She senses her hand in Father Amis’ hand, and it gives her and uneasy feeling of connectedness that she does not desire, and in his skin she can feel the evil no one else can see. Esperanza tries to lift her delicate fingers from the center of his palm, but he grips her there and begins speaking his exorcism. The words quickly form in the air and then float down onto her chest and into her like tattoos. These words a comfort to her now like daily prayers, she could speak it from memory with him, but decides not to. She lay there waiting for the spirits to be driven out, these devilish ghosts, but nothing happens. Esperanza feels the fever begin to rise and take her over again. She cannot keep her eyes open; cannot will away what Father Amis will do to her, so she settles into it like a bear in winter. “Yes,” she thinks, “I will be a bear in winter.”

Aleathia Drehmer/Beto Palaio 2009

Published by Shoots & Vines, Print Anthology "I Can't Be Your Virgin and Your Mother"

Sparking the Fire

2009-07-15T23:41:00.002-05:00

I'm my least jaded in the morning while sheets are still warm from sleep, hair mussed with dreams, and skin shiny having run from ghosts. I wake with cat mewing at the door, white paw beneath threshold, searching for a magic latch to unhook, that lets him curl into the crook of my knees. The TV is on low, some far away sounds of two dimensional, neon-colored faces, my child speaking softly and innocently to imaginary people on the couch, then, for a moment, all is silent save the scraping of the plow's blade pushing night snow into jagged heaps. Door clicks open and my progeny eases in to deliver rapid-fire cartoon fantasies about the time she was a cat trainer living in the circus, and didn't I remember that? Or, are you just too old to imagine it? Aleathia Drehmer 2009 Published by Shoots & Vines, Print Anthology "I Can't Be Your Virgin and Your Mother"

West Coast Light (for David Smith)

2009-07-15T23:31:00.002-05:00

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.

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 dream again.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Hobo Camp Review Issue 1

The Night Comes Quiet

2009-07-15T23:28:00.003-05:00

We found a sunny day and lay in the grass watching the earth breathe, pushed out in some field walled with grass and crickets and warm winds making leaves rustle like bells; humectants smell and green things curl under our noses, a dreamed memory not quite tangible yet. I rest my head upon your stomach, listening to biorhythms. I could do this for hours lost in the adventure of your working body as fingers entwine and we hold hands with skins together, molecules hovering in between tiny spaces, and I wonder how can I make you happy again. We let the earth swallow us up in silence. The light fades; night comes quiet, and our bodies chill with violence. You feel me shiver through my fingertips pressed into the bones of your knuckles, a vibration conducted that you squeeze to make stop; the first stars come out while the sky is that royal blue color that makes you want to drown yourself . We wish things in our heads.... "Starlight, star bright first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might, wish the wish I wish tonight." And I think where did that come from? Why is that the most beautiful thing I have ever heard? I break the silence. I say, Bean? and you say Yes? I whisper, Are we dead? and you say, Not yet. Ok, I say, just checking. The night extinguishes everything except the moonlight on your white t-shirt. I think you are a ghost I would like to know better. I curl up between your arm and heart, feel it beating arbitrarily ....beat beat ....beat beat... I wonder how such things can happen in the dead of night, how we just keep going and going and going until one day we don’t. The coldest of summer breezes floats in over our heads and we are numb from it. We don’t care. We stay there tucked in the grass prisoners of ink, silent prisoners of flesh.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Hobo Camp Review Issue 1

Napoleon

2009-03-30T12:49:00.001-05:00

For Jimmy R.J. LeBlond In the end, his deep black coat touched white, muzzle forlorn, peppered with old man eyebrows that dipped and arched when you spoke to him; they said volumes despite his blindness creeping in around slow deaf ears. His right hip gave him a slight limp, nails clattering against linoleum in fits and starts. He lay at my Pop’s feet chest rising with ease, his breath no less faithful than his heart, moaning in canine dreams; back leg twitching wild. I wondered from across the room if he was off somewhere in his youth walking the Appalachian Trail with Pop after Viet Nam; or taking the canoe’s helm down the mighty Mississippi in the heart of summer; or drenched with rain, tired from long treks on broken highways standing guard while his best friend lay in his bedroll in the dark night’s ditch. Napoleon cried out harshly, legs wracked the air as if in seizure. My Pop’s face sank deeply, shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly, knowing someday this old man would have to go down by his hand, that suffering in this way was never an option for the only man that understood him. He reached down placing his hand on the dog’s chest, “Face,” he said softly. The dog’s shutter eased back to dreaming, seizure exiting with a whimper and then still into even breathing, in to what we had always known. It was the first time I saw my father cry.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Winning poem in contest held by Organic Glass 3/09

The Plague of Frogs

2009-03-30T12:44:00.002-05:00

Dime size frogs construct pyramids at my doorstep, hundreds clamoring to be the triumphant piece, the eye to the heavens. This breathing swarm comes to me in the shallow hours of the morning after night rains soak the bog, and drive them to dry. They make me vigilant about my giant steps, wary of crushing their tiny bodies into blotted stains, red and brown, toothpick bones splayed out in post-mortem viewing. My daughter will hear the dirge from the water, and crouch down close to the earth, inspecting death is her proclivity, wrapping her mind around its permanence, her art. The hollow of my heart wants to alleviate the guilt of creating a sadness that will strike its mark upon her face somewhere between home and grandfather’s house, producing tears of crocodile proportions, viable stains I cannot undo.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

Two sides of the coin

2009-03-30T12:40:00.001-05:00

Box elder bugs crawling on the armchair, tiny black legs tap Morse code in response to the tamper and grind at the front of the café, while large-bodied women cackle around the high pitched trill of the thin. Two lovers study French across laptops; she dressed as a pirate and he with her hat akimbo across his well shaped head; Old women revisit the darkness that lives in their youth, finding some shelter in each other. In the bathroom, noises slip through the walls and ceiling, under the cracks in the door, up through the toilet as a vibration, a tremble that drives me until I am consumed completely as Hyde took Jekyll, and only traces of the original remain. The second side of me emerges. The face that hides under manners, gaiety and social ebulliences. I emerge transformed into the universe just as it was before. No one takes notice. I am invisible, imperceptible, intangible. Forces beyond any of our control, catches the door wide. I step into the wind and disappear.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

An Anchor Around Your Free Thoughts

2009-03-30T12:34:00.001-05:00

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

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

Stewart Street

2009-03-30T12:31:00.002-05:00

We sit on the front porch of your three-story apartment building, the wooden planks unkempt with edges splintering and nails driven up through rotted holes leaving empty spaces. You smoke your non-filtered cigarette, though not the same brand I remember from childhood, the smell less aromatic. It is somehow stale and crumbling like the moments passing slowly between our shoulders. Both of us watch my child, with her sun lightened, blonde streaks curling around her face. She is cherubic and fresh sitting in the grass digging for treasure in the dark earth with an old stick, looking up at us with untamed innocence. I think about all the things I want to say that I won’t ever have the courage to, or be able to find words good enough to bear the weight of their meanings. So we talk about poems and seasonable weather and lean only close enough to hear each other. You turn your head to tell me something important and I am lost in the sunset reflected off your glasses, heart beating faster than it should, unsure of where we go from here.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by 13 Miles from Cleveland 2/09

Standing amongst the recycling

2009-03-30T12:24:00.001-05:00

In tendrils of cigarette smoke, listening to night sounds-- crickets and moon birds, we hear the rustling leaves moved by winds in far off storms, the candle flickering as you leave it. Sweet, delicate memories wan in the youth you somehow try to dispel under the guise of advancing age and a fortitude we cannot be sure we really have. You talk about love that never takes its grace, how the waiting over a decade for its return to soften heartbreak’s edges doesn’t come. You understand he can never be the man to make us whole. And in this silence, we face each other briefly, drunk and with the knowledge that the tragedies witnessed in our collective lives could have never been, that we might not have had to spend them dreaming or wanting or waiting for an easiness to find its way to the lines on our faces, into the creases of our quiet, longing moments. The pans clank in the kitchen with familiar sounds, you mumbling to yourself like the old days, trying to busy notions from your mind; to strike out those sad remembrances you know need putting back in the cabinet. I stand here small and alone, watch the light dance off the Windex bottle, wishing I could wipe away the past without leaving evident streaks of knowing.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Rusty Truck Zine 1/09

Instead of Fireworks

2009-03-30T12:20:00.002-05:00

She twirls on the grass with arms out, a human helicopter waiting to take flight in a dress the color of latent spring, feet bare and lost in the long blades. Her toothless grin pulls open the clouded sky as she tumbles to the ground, dizzy and laughing like a child should, despite burdens too big for her narrow shoulders. She lies there in misted, summer rain with apple cheeks and unfiltered giggles rising up to where the rockets would be, if the night would only show her face. We get caught smiling at one another watching her coil the long, plastic snake into the antiquated birdbath standing crooked beneath your living room window. Her fingers run over the edges of its Italian design, crevices inhabited with algae and rainwater, trying to grasp the tail without making ripples, trying to catch one of us off guard. I gasp when she snaps the snake, sprays us with water. Her smile is a devilish infection as she looks for your approval and you laugh like you didn’t remember joy existed— head back, eyes closed laughing.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Rusty Truck Zine 1/09

Casaubon and Amparo

2009-03-30T12:15:00.001-05:00

One day, she plants a great tree in the image of man, culled tiny brown seeds taken from cored bounties leftover, pies baked and eaten warm. She moves fingers through rich soil, spayed earth moist and gathering under nails; places each polished hope, gingerly. Nestled in the corner, guarded by old weathered legs, crossed keepers of the rains and snows and sun-dappled summers. Starling's golden tritons between blacktop brambles all gorging till beaks come away berry-stained and full. She waters his roots with her purple can, speaks to him in kind while trimming long blades with shears, laughing at herself, to him, and blushes cheeks into apples. She drips ruby nectar down his throat stolen from the hummer's bell feeder when his branches begin, buds curling out, and iridescent bodies swirl around her, new northern lights. When he comes to her strong and constant, she lies beneath him, rusty fingers reach to touch her face, gold tears floating in the brush of reality. And she reads him volumes of Poe and Pound, questions the universe and space, knowing he won't ever answer her the truth, but attempt every time. He is there when seasons turn, their heart growing, in him and he never pushes her back or away, and she will smile, one day.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Shoots and Vines 12/08

The Silenced Fan

2009-03-30T12:12:00.001-05:00

It is the crest of 5am when rough-throated garbles of the rooster’s crow weakly filter up through a minted dawn on the day of the Lord. Sparrows call the light no one else can see, tell relatives on the crisp pointed maples and heady oaks about the slithering bounty, silver trails lead from a nocturnal feeding on the tender folded flowers in the bean patch. House finches and mourning doves heed the tale, twitter then coo in swirled feathers, the dawn lighting iridescent wings that hover over fat, homeless snails inching their getaway by the nights last true moments. Across the yard where new highway construction has halted, shadowed machines on the banks lumber as ancient beasts, iron dinosaurs with heads rising above red-tipped leaves chilled by the solemn beginning of autumn’s breath. The rooster calls again and brings notice to the shimmer through the blinds, a burning white disc whose beams trick the old cock into dreams laced with coming dawn and cracked corn spread around the dirt. My fingers split the dusty slats to see the moon smile, hear her whisper your name like a mantra until it finds its way between the fan blades gently turning as if lifted by wind. It coaxes me to the shelter of quilted covers where warm child limbs ease me back to sleep.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by The Poetry Warrior, Issue 3, 2/09

Balance

2009-03-30T12:09:00.003-05:00

There is a hole in her bathing suit, a small window of skin, a great oval of downy hairs and nerves perfectly encased in tropical wanderings as she reclines over a red and pink striped towel as if it were a plump tongue rolled out to taste the essence of summer. It is evening and the sun has taken its leave towards the West, setting on great men left behind in the wake of changing tides, while I lie here soaked in my favorite potion of azure skies with clouds shearing each other, above and below the belt, in real time. The sound of her breath is even and sweet against the early night, filled with bird chatter and airplanes writing their sorrows into the blue like scars, keeps me in a state of flux. The soft lapping of pool water against the tiles and the last of the day’s sun moving across the white fence, seal me into a haunting peacefulness. This moment is viable. I watch the world do what it always does regardless of my existence, despite my flesh laid out on the ground as an offering to false gods of abundance and grace. I could suffer in this sliver of time gladly, as it is somehow more perfect than all the rest.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by The Poetry Warrior, Issue 3, 2/09

I am not one

2009-03-30T11:54:00.003-05:00

I become painfully aware

of this solitary existence

as the crust of three-day old snow

crunches underfoot, the sound

in decibels, almost deafening.

Boots invade the criss-cross markings

pledged by rabbits, bits of fur and excrement

strewn on a trail not meant for humans.

Today, I am not one, but brethren

of the hare, seekers of green.

Fallen Sumac berries burst up

under light snow, red confetti

for eating in lean, gray months,

pawed and nuzzled with ears pricked

and pink eyes frightened wide.

The mind succumbs to darkness,

its thick shroud pulled close to mouth,

covering steam created by inner workings. Fires dampen easily

if not for chilled bone friction

that keeps legs moving.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Gloom Cupboard 2/09 Issue 77

Flowers for Everyone

2009-02-09T13:18:00.000-05:00

the bartender feeds her manhattans, only chargers her for every other one making it easier on them all. the more lubricated she gets the farther her shirt slides off her shoulder, drunken body leaning in a drunken boat and it reveals a tattooed ring of daisies around her left breast. she can't see much more than the faint, blurred smiles wolves licking their sharp teeth. they want to open her up like a flower, their mouths stinging her like bees touching her secrets, roughly. they want to fill her with the seeds of their fathers and watch her wilt

with the poison.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Opium Poetry 1/09

Marcy

2009-02-09T13:13:00.001-05:00

i walked into my secret lover's room without knocking, found marcy there shooting up junk between her toes, toenails dark purple like bruises, bags under her eyes and forehead glistening with sweat. a single drop rolled down her chest until it hit the wire of her black bra and absorbed. i think to myself god, she has great tits for a junkie. and i am jealous over those breasts over her dainty heroin fix over the fact

that she still has him in public.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Opium Poetry 1/09

Chew

2009-02-09T13:08:00.001-05:00

Like buskers, we linger on the streets telling false fortunes and charming snakes of their cigarettes. We are filthy on the inside with regrets that get no forbearance. In hand, we crack stolen pop-shit music into shards; pieces of Warrant and Madonna and Hootie become deadly Chinese stars in our grip. Passersby unaware we are building a shed of blood, stringing victims from its shoddy framework in the back alley, draining them like gutted pigs. I plan on drowning you, by request, in the contents of their discontent, plan on hearing you scream for an end as I keep releasing your head above the bloodline of society. But first, let us chew the theory of relativity between our teeth and bitch about how bitter it tastes.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Apoetelephone 2/09 (Audio poem)

I once dreamed of Bob Dylan

2008-12-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

In a treehouse, one walled and built from looking glass, the old man spoke to me; leaves colored like immanent death drifted and swirled, their reflection a knowing torture, and he said blankly, “You must walk the highway to get to the by-way.” I blinked twice, flashing sea stones at his face (like cracked, dried mud in noon sun) as he pointed to the lines on mine that had not been written yet.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Lit Up Magazine 11/08

Vulpes

2008-12-09T22:42:00.000-05:00

You must be open to everything, he tells me as I walk out onto the porch to count stars and burn lungs with the sweet south. There is a great silence in noise watching blue screened television through blinds, and absorbing the hum of garage door lights making a mirage on wet pavement. Rain trickles, as if slow moving rivers, into the grate. Water dripping from the wood beneath my feet vibrates like the inner sanctum of a clokkemaker, the gears in my head constructing time stealers. I hear 18 wheels on the wet curves, air in brakes signaling the solemn fact that these small towns go ghost on Sunday’s at six. All that is left are the strangers gliding over tangles of highway, silver-backed foxes low slung in hunt. With nimble fingers, even in the damp coming winter, I tell him sadly, but with conviction, There are no stars tonight, no stars.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by LitteraTour 12/08 (Translated into Portuguese)

Black Seas

2008-12-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Regression happens with age, bodies morph into sharp, geometric renditions of flesh with insipid harsh angles. Her face engulfed by the caverns her sockets make, muddied pools empty and still with no flickering fire cast about the walls. The skin stretched over her face looks waxy and I beckon the notion to call Madame Tussaud, but this woman lacks singular importance in the world, one old leaf ready to be blown about and put back to the earth. No accolades for her bravery. I sit here in the dark watching her breath hover, the vapor shaped in the image of Gabriel, and I let the room escape me. Her collarbone creates a valley that could hold the Black Sea, her mind lost somewhere between youth and release, and I want to touch the sweat collecting there. Her salted life seeping up from her center as if a spring of ground water. My fingers reach out silently as she opens her eyes in one, small moment of lucidity to ask me, “Am I still alive?” Her face alight in that second showing me the heartbreak of lovers, meals cooked, children swaddled, and presents given with knowing. “Yes,” I tell her, “yes.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Heroin Love Songs 11/08

Try as he may to keep them

2008-12-09T22:26:00.001-05:00

Brambles both red and black begin their reach to birth, entangled with briar and her fresh face that is always accompanied by some sting of pain. The long hibernation of life, a shallow breathing in winter, gives up with arms spread wide, chest open and unprotected to the sun. There is a great deception in the new tenderness of May with her skies the color of summer, and stoic white cloud plateaus I could climb if not so out of reach. The air remains stiff enough to bite noses carnelian. Old father makes his last attempts to keep his daughters three inside his hovel; to keep them from shedding layer upon layer revealing shoulders and knees and lips to the wayward souls of the men of summer, but they disregard his pleas and warning laying but a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

The map to the road of happiness

2008-12-09T22:23:00.001-05:00

Streets suddenly are lined with trees burgeoning leaves in yellow-green, while the cherry and crabapple send pink promises, like tiny baby fingers, into the road. Around us there is music lifting from windows rolled all the way down, the heat carries portions of songs from the lips of drivers; fingers tap the roof as heads bob to the beat. Driving out of town, the season’s change gets marked with signs of orange, their directional nature reassuring that order is once again restored with the rise of Mercury. The river low and green banked, pulls alongside the town that has settled into its curves. Willows begin to weep, and fathers stand with toes in the water showing sons how to cast out and reel in. We pull to the side of the road for ice cream, the olds stand scattered in their early afternoon glory, leaning on canes in lines for sweet creams in flavors of their youth. This is one more summer added to the decades; time allowing them green leaves for just a short while longer, and giving them another chance to smile at their lovers while playfully catching drips that slide down cake cones.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

In the moments of waiting

2008-12-09T22:18:00.000-05:00

The river is at its banks, willing spring with sheer force and for the first time, I can see the hills lit up in the pallid end of winter’s grip; clouds hang lazy in a pink-tinged yellow sunset lighting up spires of churches and dusty smokestacks, factories in full blaze. Mangled branches pierce the horizon pushing fingertips of new green, a promise of life to bring us a much needed bounty if only we could wait that long.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

What we find when we are not looking

2008-12-09T22:15:00.001-05:00

Tired limbs are dragged through the new spring grass forging the crest of the dyke; the creek is already lower than after last year’s thaw. We comment its difference as if it tells some new meaning to life. The air comes up cooler by the rocks, tightens our skins in a pleasant way, giving the impending end to this walk a heaviness, an ill-fitting cap to the day. We share a trust, she and I, as her tiny hand fits into my bigger one, to lead her to places of safety; the ease of her doing this bends me round the heart in this hushed moment. Feet move down the embankment in measured steps laced with hesitation, until level ground is felt. We speak of adventures and the risk of unknown paths taken in haste, but more so, of the risks incurred for not. A verdant trail snakes gently through hordes of dried grasses and skeletons of Queen Anne’s lace with heads tilted and dethroned; carcasses of milkweed with pods half-cracked reveal pristine fluff with seeds, loosely attached. And there is more than wonder written on her face as I send creamy tuffs through the air, floating precariously on wet wings; her stray flaxen curls bounce in the chase, sun-reddened arms reach to catch fairies in mid flight. My gaze strays to the small, bare tree. Perched head high, the red- winged blackbird speaks, cocks his head east and west, leaving one shiny eye in my direction before launching into the dying light. Above, the moon hangs loosely in her three-quarter dressing gown, makes eyes at the sun across the way; the sky more tropical than oceans with hills red fired behind, and we stop to look. Her head rests against my ribs with an arm wrapped round, fingers lightly digging into my hip, and both of us breathing it in. I stretch my free hand out to the side, waiting for yours to slip in it, making a connection between us, somehow putting a circle together and filling it in with more than could be expected while crowning it with a smile above our heads.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

This night changes all others

2008-12-09T22:11:00.001-05:00

Up from the ditches, weeds lush and green make a mockery of the stagnant waters they came from. Robins with their red-breasted double buttoned suits, fastidious about their worms after the first spring rain floods them to the surface. Their deep, earthy musk like loam, rich and moist, mingles with the new mist forming in the center of the road, just a fledgling fog. Forsythia in full push of the season, with its woody arms bear sparks of butter yellow sun, warming the damp of evening. In the glow of houses, with soft porch lamps lit, rocks painted as ladybugs huddle at bases of mailboxes, giving rise to good omens and letters of love to bless this house. An old woman shuffles to the screen door to watch me pass when her faithful Lab loosens a hollow bark of warning; wrinkled hand rests on his black head, wet nose nudges up in gratitude. My eyes become set to the treetops, their black lines intricate and fierce like pumping arteries that carry the blood of spring, and I stare off until my vision goes blind in twilight's grip. Again, I look for you in this days ending, wanting to speak to you of how mists rise and nights fall; how birds dance and puff in their mating time; the preciousness of buds on trees still brilliant green in shadow's depth; the smell of dirt and how someday we will nap in it one last time when the leaves of our lives peter out into obscurity. But what is settled for, begrudgingly, are tales told to road signs and curved double yellow lines with their boundaries and halts, until the moment of longing is gone.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08