North Beach

for jas Your body is bent over the sides of a high jump bed that you and that other guy have scaled leaving me curled at the bottom, half covered half insane with exhaustion. And we don’t listen to each other with music in one ear and out the other through white wires; And the phone is ringing the red phone, the hot phone the eagle phone, ringing. You and that other guy just stare at it, blankly and then smile at me. I answer it expectantly. “It’s the president,” I tell you, “he wants his brain back.” And we all look to the table where it sits as we have used it for an ashtray, butts crushed, but still glowing in the frontal lobe. I lay back down, a dog at your feet ready to sleep. And then the doorbell rings, you and that other guy kick me off the bed and I hit the floor with a thud, mumbling under your breath about it being my turn. I walk passed the television, It is on without sound, streams of violence and war footage casually displayed like cartoons. I answer the doorbell in my underwear. It was north beach. I shout to you “Hey its north beach, and its for you.” You shout back, “Tell her I’m not fucking here.” She tells you, “I fucking heard that asshole.” I watch her big white ass saunters down the sidewalk. I close the door. I climb the bed. I tell you and that other guy “move over bitches.” Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by Kill Poet (Issue 4) 4/08

The Turning of Wheels

Maria’s life felt negligible at best staring out the window of her second floor apartment at all the other replicated buildings just like her own, and she spent hours in lustful curiosity about the goings on inside the other tenants homes; wondered what secrets were held behind stately green doors and twelve paned windows. The neighbors were of the keep to themselves type, and often Maria only saw or heard their children playing in the grassy courtyard, or up and down the wide looping road that encircled the complex; the sound of wheels on pavement (bicycles, skateboards, roller blades) could always be heard and she mourned the day that those frictional tones would not be included in the arsenal of white noise she relied on daily. Today, Maria felt sadder than she had ever before, sitting in her black leather computer chair, as there seemed to be a deeper emptiness in her vigil than days previous, and she wanted winter to shoulder this burden, to take the blame, but she could not bring herself to accuse him. Her life had slowly been drained of unwanted noise and time vacuums—the sound of sports constantly on the television, the opening and closing of the porch door in the middle of the night when he snuck out for cigarettes, the raucous quality of his snoring, and his groans of obesity and aging that made her grit her teeth and beg for acts of attrition. He had taken those things with him when he left their apartment for good, when Maria had messily torn at his heart with her fingers, fracturing the long years of their marriage together; fracturing the miles of sadness she held inside over the decade of their accumulation. She traded his noise laden presence for the solitude of the world just happening moment to moment, with its quiet deaths and births that went unseen by most, except by Maria who recorded them with her eyes and ears from the dim room at the back of the building on the second floor from the creaking black chair, and she waited for a sign or some tiny acknowledgement to validate her own existence. Aleathia Drehmer 2008 Published by Six Sentences 3/08

"Staring down a white-tailed doe"

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

"Lying in the Grass"

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

"Blue"

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

hollow

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

Atmospheric Pressure

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

The River

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

The Dress

The need for attention proves agonizing the crazier Jenna feels. It assails her mind until no corners are untouched by its wickedness. She sees herself strutting through the center of town, through the business square with its one street bustle, in her full-length seventies gowns, being judged and juried by the community. The dresses are hideous, showing the degree of her mental decline, they speak to her, and she hears their language; listens to the stories about the journey the garments have made from person to person until landing on the racks at Salvation Army, waiting for her to rescue them. The automatic door opens slowly with a creaking of age. The smell of time hits her in the nose. She runs her left hand over the garments. Each gown glows with an aura making her fingers get numb and tingly. Jenna closes her eyes to avoid biasing her choices based on favorite colors or textures. A dress must be felt intrinsically to achieve the status of the midday parade through downtown. No ordinary gown can qualify. Her entire body halts as electricity arcs into her fingertips. The feeling is strong and Jenna hesitantly opens her eyes to reveal a wonder. Beneath her hand is the most glorious dress she has ever seen. It is 100% polyester, floor length, black and white calla lilies pieced together in a visual feast. The sleeves are full to the wrist, and the neckline plunging into a shift bodice that pulls the eye to the floor. Jenna quivers in anticipation of trying the dress on. “It has to fit, it has to fit,” she chants to herself on the way to the dressing room. The curtain to the small changing room slides over easily, the sound of it reminds her of getting in the shower, it smells of mothballs and old ladies, but these attributes have become enchanting. They signify impending discoveries. Jenna disrobes down to her bra, panties and black, worn combat boots studying herself in the mirror, though it never does any good. She cannot see what kind of girl she is, and the girl in the mirror never tells her anything useful. With arms up high, the dress comes down over her head, sliding easily and perfectly into place over her breasts. The fabric releases from her hands and swishes to the dirty carpet below, swallowing her boots. Her hands smooth out the wrinkles, running over hips and breasts and thighs. The dress is immaculate and fits her without question like a second skin. The African charm fastened around her neck as a choker gives the look statement, her clean-shaven skull with swaths of paprika hair, adds just the right amount of color. Jenna studies her image and feels complete. She removes the garment, carefully folds it, checks the price tag several times to be assured it is affixed. Items without price tags cannot be sold until re-priced, and they almost always are more expensive once desired. Her clothes are replaced like old friends, and she sweeps back the curtain of the dressing room with flourish holding her head high like a movie star, an heiress, an artist, a musician, a woman bent in more ways than one. Jenna lays the dress upon the counter as if handling a newborn or a fragile artifact. The check out girl roughly unfolds it, shakes it out, inspects it and looks at her sideways, screwing up her face. She’s got to be crazy to wear a dress like this. “That’ll be $1.99 plus tax.” Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by The Clockwise Cat 8/07

Drowning

Mikela watches Jonah blow smoke rings around his pallid face in the half darkness. The wisps trail from his lips along the bridge of his straight, long nose before dissolving in front of his eyes. Light from the television screen reflects in his glasses as he sits motionless. Jonah’s long legs fold up in front of him like stilts as he leans his back into the ratty brown couch. It is stained from late night parties and laziness, the fabric worn in places until the padding is evident. She looks at him as if he were a building whose architecture she might want to scale and measure. The shape of his limbs perfectly angular as they connect to the center of his body, beams jutting from a steel frame, his exterior slick and fragile, as if coated in a fine layer of glass. Images from the television make shapes on his face, the same as on her face as she sits directly behind him silently stroking the fine, dark brown hairs at the base of his neck. He blows a perfect ring of smoke into the silence. Mikela stares through the center at the black and white movie that has been playing for the last hour. She can see Tom Waits’ mouth moving, face contorting, arms flailing about, but she is relegated to imagining the gravel of his voice, as Jonah likes to watch movies without sound. He tells her he would rather study the language of the body in conversation than the language of voice with so many of its words wrapped in double meanings. “The body does not lie the way words can,” he says to her. Mikela tilts her head to the right towards the curtain-less windows; the squares of glass dirty from smoking. She looks at the field to the side of the house; the raspberry brambles build a fortress around the edges in the moonlight. She notices the fish swimming in the tank that is sandwiched between two low-slung sills. The off white paint slowly chipping reminding her of paper birch trees, and it makes her want to get up and start peeling it away. But the filter bubbles into the tiny ecosystem distracting her, and the light catches on the iridescent scales of her tetras. She is captured here for a minute, contemplating her arrival at this very place in time; how after all these years she would find herself alone, but not alone, watching silenced movies in the dark. She can’t touch him without the fear of drowning in his sorrow, without extinguishing her own joyfulness, and she realizes right then that he is something she cannot fix. Smoke dissipates above the crown of his head again hanging there like a soft mist and Mikela suddenly feels like an apparition. He is lost in himself in these moments and she is nothing to him. She could pass through him unnoticed except for the sudden chilling in the air that would make him shiver, but not notice her. And when the feeling of an invisible hand lightly brushing the hairs of his arm alarms him, only then will he remember she was once there. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Beat the Dust 1/08

"Throwing A Life Preserver"

for Alfaro I fell asleep On the airplane With your words Imbedded in my brain Taking hold Expanding Until the cadence Of your voice Was intertwined I awoke with words Catapulting forward How can such wings Be strong enough To carry the weight At such a slow speed? I awoke to pressure Between my ears Air pressure Word pressure A third pressure To find something On which to write It all down! The plane climbs Invisible stairs In the air The attendant Pierces me As I reach For my bag I take the magazine From the seatback Scribbling words Across the South Georgia Island Thoughts across Russia Mongolia to China And Micronesia Until I have reached The end of the world With your words On my brain Your voice in my ear A faceless, soundless voice That won’t leave Me alone. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Silenced Press 11/07

"Step Lightly on the Forest Floor"

Pushing up from the loam, from the self-induced darkness temptations oscillate above me in attempts to stunt the growth of walls constructing/deconstructing around my core. Somehow I imagined the absence of light and voices, filled with gentle words, sifted through fences, might diminish me back into reality. But it only covers me in a fine layer of dirt rich in conflict laced emotions, and sometimes I feel left to the obscurity, only noticed in fits of automatic need that satiate curiosity or buffer the pain of loneliness. And you make light about the condition of my keep, left in the dark sustained on shit, and I laugh with you only because it is true. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Abacus"

She only holds hands until the second crosswalk and then the warmth of tiny fingers floats away without care; This large hand left grasping at fog already cool from her absence. It starts the morning ritual, inspecting the fringes of sidewalk for slugs, keeping meticulous count on eager fingers, prepared to move beads on the abacus hanging in front of her eyes. They are cataloged by size and thickness until the final count has been reached, until the flower beds draw her in with colors and dew, and she flawlessly moves on to spider webs. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Agua 2007

"New Ideas that are not New"

The red-haired boy rings around an oak tree filling his curiosity like a pail left out in the rain, each droplet providing a transfer of energy bent on lighting up his face. Little by little it creeps up from his chin pulling muscles into a smile, cheeks livening with the pink of new ideas and eyes pop open in wonder as the most important man in his life tips his head around the trunk. A chase ensues. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Olly, Olly Oxen Free"

This forest is thick with haves and have nots, heavy with could be's, drenched in the evenings lingering dreams. I see him around the tree hiding and holding his breath, shushing the sound of his heart beating louder that fists swung in a rage. He finds that place where it quiets and limbs relax into the bark and sounds have silence under their tongues. And I cannot stand to watch it so easily attained, this restraint and knowing of concepts that have always been my crosses to bear, with their heavy hands upon me, no intensions of sharing the burden. So I leave him there backed into his tree, in his sounded silence, his miraculous resolutions of heart, and slip into the dark. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Erbacce 2/08

"Quiets in the Sound"

I open my door to the fresh of morning, a wisp of fog still hanging loosely around the burning bushes and it is there I find a head of stone, Its sweet face meticulously carved into the gray. I run my fingertips over the features smooth and life like, and I think of your face when I close my eyes, pausing a moment at the lips, sigh my heart into your mouth. I turn its heaviness over in my hands, rough and uncut save a symbol gouged into a smoothing that tells me of paradox in tiny glyphs and marks, sings to me “Twinkle, twinkle like a star does love blaze less from afar?” out of the peaks of rough stone that remind me of the sea, and I add my salt to its body willingly. The creator etches his secrets into the granite knowing it will hold them, knowing the surface is stronger than most men, that words in their simplicity can pluck so tender at the strings of a heart until it quiets in the sound. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Meant to be Broken"

Driving down the highway into a rising fog thick from the river, and I feel stuck inside my brain; thinking of the force your will pushes me with, how it punishes me into humility. Moving around the bend faster than the limit, grinding random rules between my teeth, their acrid taste scares me because I cannot get enough, and the sun bursts sideways through the density turning everything white. I feel your hand, cool and smooth, softly wiping away the condensation of my fear. Your skin wet with the heaviness of me, with the residue of my emotional explosions, rabid dog obscenities and lack of control. You touch my chaos to your mouth and it taints the waters between us. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by Debris Magazine 7/08

"Headspace"

I sit and wait in silence today under a canopy of spider webs laden with summer’s furtive capture. The old fat men lazy in their hammocks take in what is left of their lives. The world seems alive today, more than yesterday, with prospects of discovery cajoling me. The bobbing of goldenrod releases pollens sure to induce future miseries, and leads me to believe their musty odor is something to be relished as the garnering of autumn. But more so, it is the wind speaking to the trees, curling its chilled tongue full of secrets and whispers, around the leaves, transforming the color of the world, coaxing them into slumber like a maiden fair. Some part of me yearns for this kiss of permanent sleep that would find me suspended in the fine mist between reality and dreams until the taste of spring thaw drips unto my lips, lingering there like a prince beholden of beauty resting in silence under a canopy of spider webs. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Angle of Arms"

She finds moments when their bodies are close together, skins in light sweat sticking with feverish tension as she guides the young girl’s arm through a perfect forehand; Her sex rubbing against the flounce of a tennis skirt; The friction of her breasts pushing into a delicate back during the follow through. These things are all too tempting, as she plies this young thing, this child into a bleeding story speaking of star-crossed and forbidden lovers telling tall tales about the differences between them, their strength more than the world can handle. Though the span of their ages is greater than the sum of the girl’s years she cannot change the desires or the love buried inside her as she lowers her face into sweetness and innocence to taste that which was never hers to begin with. Aleathia Drehmer 2007 Published by False Eye Beetle 2007

"Faces of Old Men"

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