poetry by C.G.

She made little goblets out of chewing gum tinfoil. A little wad on the base and they would cleave the air, sticking gently to the ceiling. The walls at odd angles and the floors in reliefff, assaulting you. Polished tiles are moving prisms- pink and, assaulting you. Polished tiles are moving prisms- pink and wavy, sometimes dark and severe. Other things. Her hair, alive, gleaming, begging to be stroked and wooed and handled. Black waves of yearning, teased out by flecks on a tiny plastic comb. Not one to revel in strange rituals among clumps of cotton and certain sticky ointments redolent of foam. Instead a stream of artful gestures- hasty grins, brazen, effusive little scowls. But the hitch was in complicity alone.

Very prettily she ambles up the stairs as if she knew some hidden camera followed her unceasingly, blurring rough hues in the background to linger on the dull exquisite lines of her nose and lips. Hips should never swagger or insolently beg to differ, dragging gracious neighbor torso into feigned spasms of slithery delight. No, they should never be alloweinto feigned spasms of slithery delight. No, they should never be allowed to throw her off her well-earned center. That was for the dance hall. Perhaps. For the moment there was much to do.

When she walked into the bedroom like that, her adorable plump face shattered old reflections. There was something she knew but shut out. She kept her silence and looked for patterns. But it isn't as if they sat still while she ruthlessly imbibed. No, they could hurl themselves (flying locks of sand, bolts of mangled feathers). Perhaps she clung to lowered blinds, or to the edge of bed as it receded. What I know for sure is that she felt it, like cool wool against her ear or her center of gravity being

toyed with. And of course a breezy agony, a breathless joy, even as that strange rush of air ripped through your eardrums or the bile hit your tongue and it was like tearing out your insides. You thought you would wake the house with your screams but you never did because the screams stretched only inwards (never so much as scraping the surface). Then it was all gone and you somehow forgot it ever happened. And the rest of the day, perhaps in fragments, only in gestures, but you sensed it again, prickling your insides. Your room, sometimes of staggering proportions.

Things are best seen through tiny cellophane windows. Like on smooth envelopes brushed against your cheek. Or frozen dinners (parentheses forever giving way to newer sets of brominated and hydrogenated wonders). Rapacious electronic signals, multi-colored, textured to perfection...parlor tricks, preludes to enticing, more severe impressions. Sit in silence and the house unravels. Splayed out on wooden floorboards, head resting on folded arm, peering at the space under the bed, you seem to have found your element. Because I swear, sometimes you loomed down on a hateful string of spider's silk, daring us to even breathe lest it snap or trail off into the wind- taking you with it, casting you adrift (shudder at the thought?)

Every space you fill with your unquestioned contours. Do you ever stop to feel the air around you sing, seethe, boil at your discretion? Add me to your hoard of ingrate husbands, wretched sons, but let me go quietly. As soon as your eyes flited back and forth, as soon as your eyebrows made those upside-down V's,

                                                                           I was a goner.