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Three
Poems
by
Jillian Benedict
Dressage
Breath
beats out of
runner’s
lungs, music
from
warm wet drums
stuck
between ice
and
a cold place
on
the trails.
I
watch from the car
pumping
heat into
naked
palms, hoping for deer,
mouthing
my invisible bit.
Forever
tied to the belt loop
of
your jeans.
Foam
drips onto jackets.
I
tongue the hard metal bar,
accepting
that it tethers me to you.
You
smile. I settle
on
a radio station.
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Regulars
I’m
ready to jump out of my skin
and
land amongst the thick rimmed
coffee
mugs and over easy blood
of
Sunday brunch after church.
Splatter
on half eaten toast,
fleshy
jelly spread across pores
of
wheat and burnt white,
marrow
leaving a light, bright crunch,
throughout
Grandad’s dentures,
plaqued
with Western omelet.
Grandmom’s
decaf coffee
shining
in the aftermath of dissolved Stevia
In
The Raw, like my make-up-less
face.
Flat next to sister’s box-born
firebird
hair and sweet 17 black
eyeliner,
I
watch her dissect eggs. Pretending she’s not hungry,
like
last time, and the time before
when
brother was too busy cutting
Boar’s
Head and beef to join us amid
the
old dull utensils of the past 20 years.
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Veins
and Fingers
Blue
strings sit beneath my skin,
puckering,
catty-corner
to trigger finger
and
palm
where
they disappear into scarlet night
to
dance in the throbbing rhythms of ventricles
and
atriums.
Bursting
under quick steps and sweat,
before
returning limp to their own cold fingers.
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