Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

You'd Rather...

from memory’s landscape
afterlives creep
underneath the edges
reeking of rot and mold
as if savage stinkweed
in synchronized clusters,
nebulous fury,
and spellbound disgust
things you’d rather forget

woe, the massive slaps
received at age eleven
for the mouse you saved
from the trap, but so worth it…
or was it an adult’s
predatory hand beating
below your blues
or her dying wish
you ignored?

worse, the day you walked
with a tear in your pants
into glass doors
and still, you talked
in idled intellect
and ghostly gothic
--your default mode--
to a monstrous audience
from a shrouded podium

the worst, a futile dignity
gnawing on your skin
when you fled barefoot
dripping blood
on groundless gossip
you, the washrag
wrung out wrong,
rejecting the pain
in his defenseless eyes

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prompt: something (things) you might rather forget