"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

"How Deep It Is"

Her head slumps forward in the wheelchair, chin accusing the mouth of drooling too much, and he pushes her steadily looking around at the grayness, at anything but the line of spittle from her lips and is lost in a far off look of sadness that mirrors hers. There is love between them though hidden and morphed over years of illness, memory loss ,and time. The sweetness of it now faded on the tongue, as she no longer knows his name, or her own. It is the scraping of her sneakers echoing off the glass buildings filled with pretty things she won’t remember or maybe did not even see. The black smudges digging grooves into her white tennis shoes with fateful resistance tell the biggest story, of how things push her against her will and how she is left with silent arguments between body parts for company. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"When It Falls Away"

My body is curious, transparent like air, invisible molecules undergoing fission and fusion in rapid succession as October drills in through the windows with the sounds of my bird on the playground entertaining the German girl from next door with loud spoken stories she will never understand; And autumn is flashing her bosom blushed in jacinth and cinnabar, the foothills alight in the slow burn rising into the blue. Aleathia Drehmer 2007

"Fragile"

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

"Beating Her Chest"

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

"The Horai"

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

"Mt. Llullaillaco"

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

"Charcoal"

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

"Complications of Love"

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

"Too Much To Ask"

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

"Utopia"

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

"Subversions"

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

"If Only We Were In California"

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

"Ecosystems"

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

"The Funeral March"

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

"West Coast Light"

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

"And Truths Were Spoken"

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