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Death Comes Upon You

Christina Bavone

 

Manifesto! ignorare!

 

When the leaves change,
I must write about them.
That’s what happened
I wrote about the leaves.

Natural reverence picked me up
and put me in poetry’s basket.
I stayed for a while only straying
to pick up useful adjectives and verbs.

Collecting life in tin cans,
only to pickle later
for safe keeping.

Poetry is life.
Poetry works life like a red-sequined dress,
and then goes out for dinner afterwards.

I want to have a phone conversation with myself.
And then bleed afterwards.
Eventually poetry will bandage me,
and then sometimes it doesn’t.

I want to whistle in the face of poetry.
Then I’ll know I’ve made it
when poetry has felt my
spit on its vibrato.

 

 

mangledadj.

 

I maul adjectives
and eat adverbs alive.
I step out with pejorative
statements clinging to my cheek.
The chocolate chip, Oreo images
smeared across my lower lip
and I couldn’t quite pick the crumbs of allegory
off my blouse.

The characteristics of the protagonist
dangle from my ear lobe
threatening to let go.
Slimy plot dripping from my nose
always trying to get away.

My dimples held dialogue
like ingenious puddles that would
eventually dry up over time.
I didn’t realize my
obsession for the written word
until a passerby yelled out to me,
“Hey, what have you been
doing? Making out with a
book?”

And I looked up to my reflection only to discover
a 3” thick layer of black words
coating my mouth.

 

 

Nerves shot straight to hell.

 

I wait,
straining to hear the telephone.
Red ants creep up my throat;
my stomach turns counter-clockwise this time
                  in paralysis.

                           I’m tripping
off of surreal adolescent films –
the sweet voice of Alice
wondering which land she is in.

Don’t give me that psycho-sympathetic look.
You know how it feels
to try and control
the out-of-control.

Sexual participation one night;
the clutches of murder the next.
Where will it all end?

My voice cracks under the pressure. Is it? Dead?
The twigs crumble beneath me
and I fall.
The hole was pre-dug.
It was a trap.
The judgment of dirt – what a child’s toy.

It’s all the fault of that damned rabbit hole.

My baby sister doesn’t
realize the difference
between life and death,
but I do.

The sweat pours out
in droplets, “I’m sorry, but I had to.”

The rubber band snaps in two
and the release of tension
sends me into delirium.

The Queen’s had my Ace,
but the joke’s on her.
I’m running.

But you always knew
I was crazy, so
I won’t go into disgusting, controversial details.

 

 

Death Comes Upon You

 

it hovers, then falls
like a sheet,

a white one,
translucent.

gossamer skin;
toes pointed skyward;
brick mortar over
bare legs bristly black.

now dark
thick as dinner coffee.
you wait

for an afterlife
that never comes –
stuck in this body
folded over

on the asphalt.

 

 

BIO

christina-bavone_2Christina Bavone is a teacher and writer of fiction and poetry. She currently teaches writing at National Louis University. She holds a Bachelors in writing from Columbia College and a Masters in teaching from National Louis University. She is currently pursuing a Masters in English at University of Illinois at Chicago as a part of their Program for Writers. She has published poems in online lit mag Ophelia Street and international publication Every Second Sunday. In addition to teaching and writing, Christina is mother to a boisterous 4-year-old.

 

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