Also
Under lock and key, my daily secrets:
chocolate from the bins when no one’s
looking, yes, and also, my desire
to lick your wounds, rub lemon
lotion into your rough hands,
touch your sleeve as we walk,
to keep, in fact, one hand on you
as we eat our soup from blue bowls,
butter our toast, to keep you here
with the sheer energy of my wanting
and also, this secret in my locked
black box: I want to fly away.
I want to walk out on the green
Briones hills—where blue-eyed grass
pipes up in the lupine and the poppies blow—
on my long tall legs, stride hugely,
faster and faster until I lift up, break
into flight—Wind, no questions, no desires,
no tubes and wires, no kindness,
all of it blown away—
That storm, that flight
put back now
into the box beside
dried penstemons,
three chocolates, a list
of things to fix.
thanks giving
out of prison we are on parole we are getting better
two lobsters out of the pot we are seeing the light
we are moving on moving up moving out
of the end of the tunnel and no train in sight
it’s been dark in there full of monstrous terrors
we were afraid we were so afraid
and your feathers fell out all around us
we kept picking them up and tucking them in
but finally you were naked as a plucked chicken
you were lying in the pan and I was basting you
tenderly in that ointment this oil that basil
tarragon olive dorzolamide ratuxin chemical bath
your eyes rolled back I could see you screaming inside
out we got you out of the pan trussed you up
in a new blue shirt your hair comes back in
peachy white thin fuzz your hands stop burning
you stand up and walk you remember the words
you are out we are out here smiling
Art Information
- “A Field of Poppies” © Michael Warren; Creative Commons license
- “Illinois Central R.R., freight cars in South Water Street freight terminal, Chicago, Ill.” by Jack Delano; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; public domain
Gail Rudd Entrekin has taught poetry and English literature at California colleges for 25 years. Her most recent collection of poems, Change (Will Do You Good) (Poetic Matrix Press), was nominated for a Northern California Book Award. Her poems were finalists for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod in 2011.
She is editor of the online environmental literary journal Canary and poetry editor of Hip Pocket Press in Orinda, California.
