Issue 3:
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Janet I. Buck
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A Sack of Flour
On surface tile, the "home"
was busy joints of serving
lunch-trays studded
with a blooming rose.
Smiles pressed like safety goggles,
separating fact from feel.
Empty beds were dots on maps
they folded up and stuffed away.
The toggle switch of closing shifts.
Human was a flock of geese
that jetted South for winter months.
Bed pans--worshipped Buddhas
in a Chinese temple.
Never stayed quite long enough.
Hope and prayer transplanted here
like palm trees in a parking lot.
Rush hour traffic--
come and go of families who
could not sit this close to death.
They paced, brought lacy chocolate
hearts to sweeten urine
crusted as old candle wax.
Emotion’s choke was seeded grapes.
People spitting people out.
Flesh was canvas to be stored.
Bones were slats in wicker chairs
that sat in nothingness too long.
White snow hair was everywhere--
like driving through a sack of flour.
It should have been that
powdered sugar gingerbread--
not the cracked clay cave it was--
with hollow echoes drumming old
that screamed six octaves courting love.
~Janet I. Buck
Janet's poetry appears on the internet in over 200 publications. Calamity's Quilt, her new collection published by Newton's Baby, will be in bookstores this fall. Email.
© 1999 by Janet I. Buck. All Rights Reserved.
© 2000-2002 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.
This page updated April 23, 2002.