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Three
Poems
by
Kelley J. White
Development
They
are in a doorway, but you can't tell.
Bright
faces emerge out of darkness.
Plastic
jewels reel down the baby's chest,
pool
in her lap. She has hung a dozen
necklaces
around her neck. One giant slipper,
out
of focus, brushes the lens. She peeks
over
large yellow sunglasses pulled below her eyes.
Ribbons
curl over her head, beside her sister's
smile.
And it is a smile. The big green shirt falls
forward,
exposing a little shoulder. Dimple.
Good
cheekbones. A missing tooth. Pearls
and
lace. Darkness behind them. Dark
underneath.
Am I behind the camera
or
in the dark room behind the door?
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Double-Boiler
He
kept a skull in his head and carried an iron
mask.
He loved the taste of napalm flaring
red
and roaring on his tongue. PT Barnum
signed
him for Hollywood and the Broadway
stage
came undone.
Scaliwag,
somedays his head was empty,
and
his weave came all undone. His arm
was
scarred up and torn where the muscles
had
been cut. He ate mice and birds so he
knew
he had to be a cat.
Graceful
frogs danced by. He remembered
his
silken wings. Petunia wore her halo.
It
flashed a storm was coming through. That
black
sunlight sharpened his teeth
before
the first eclipse at noon.
It
was nearly hurricane season and Ms. Pig
wore
no hat. The day his wings were torn
a
dancehall toad sashayed past. The cat
ate
it: therefore it must have been
a
mouse. They nearly had
to
amputate but he had some movement
in
the hand. His dreads freeze-dried
and
broke. By autumn his head was wrapped
in
dry leaves. The one man show closed
down
on Christmas,
he
took the midnight train. Got a job with
Truman
Bros. Stayed onstage. He swallowed
swords
spitless, with a sizzle, and a gasp.
He
slept inside an iron lung. He kept
his
brain inside a skull.
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Dragon
Teeth
Bruce
Lee fought in a hall of mirrors;
he
stood in horse stance, bleeding
from
parallel claw cuts down his narrow
muscled
chest. At every turn he saw
himself.
In slow motion he leaps, kicks,
shatters.
I avert my eyes or I will see
myself,
huge, reflecting back
to
eternity in any direction. My body
is
clumsy, untrained. If I step forward
I
pursue myself, running away, away,
away.
. .Are they carnival mirrors,
distorting,
or must I face their truth?
I
make myself blind, stumble through.
I
crack the glass, fragments: lip, eye,
fingernail,
ear, elbow, knee. Seven years
bad
luck, seven, seven, another seven,
seven.
I have not got that many years.
My
feet bleed when I step across
the
silvered pieces. I am still pursuing
myself
over my left shoulder. Is this
how
we die, Bruce, cut by the
pieces
of our broken selfs?
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