The Night Comes Quiet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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