Amy Soricelli- Two Poems

Dirty Laundry

Gina watches the spin of the worn flowered sheets -

their screams shake off from the corners, land hard on the cement floor.

Blood soaks up the daisy prints ran wild down the seam - swing their hips

and puff around the edges like vines.

She rolled them up fast in a ball before they saw.

She sways and shakes - her headphones deep into the black shadows of fear -

her mind on the smash against the wall hair pulled up round her head like a halo.

Gina pastes her eyes flat down on the People magazine; blinks back the slick pages of six packs -

the lacy movie stars skin silky smooth like cream-

needles crash hard across the street/she lives on the other side of everything.

He told her he was sorry; that she shouldn't answer him back/she knows better/she made him do this.

All she was ever taught is fist-ed up in a napkin and flushed fast like a goldfish.

He took her hair first then her neck held his fingers down so hard she saw Gods eyes wrapped in

Catholic school plaid floating on some Bronx beach with her uncle Hector.

Toy truck rolls by her feet - flies fast under the folding table with the greasy fast food wrappers

curled like a snicker underneath her shoes.

Mijo - get your truck bring it here.

Gina rocks her baby girl deep into her arms - her boy folded on a seat now -

his truck back and forth across the long sweet length of her arm.

Music from a passing car fills the laundromat - its warm breath like smoldering ash settles

into the bruise on her leg and the deep brown hope of her eyes

 

 

it is not like a wave to a sailboat when someone you love says goodbye
(or) I've been reading too much Richard Brautigan

you will leave a deep scar across my memory when you leave;
a fine craggy collection of uneven odds and ends
misshapen kidney bean spirits/ lost breath in the wind.

it will be a rugged road up the carnival hill to see
the clowns in paper hats/ their red smiley drippy faces
hidden back down/ice-cream cone cigarettes behind the bathrooms in the back.

they will turn to see me standing single-file against my thoughts
swinging high on some wire like a perched bird.
It will be lonely in your shadow of goodbyes.

you will leave a smooth surface of regret like a sheet
of solid glass/ hold up your face to the rain/ catch the splinters of
drops that cool down the roughest hot love you left me with.

there will be no answer to the unfinished baked bread half-risen
sorrowful black- white movie sentiments etched across a tee-shirt.
those love letters will be ash/puffed up clouds of dust
and dust and dust.