Two-Line Poems for 100 Days of Writing

Two-Line Poems for June 2018

June 1:

What do you say when a pastor prays for you while you bow over a sprawl of skirt 

and clutch frozen meat in a throbbing hand on an uneven kitchen floor? 

June 2:

A stage, a fall, a distant warning echoed by a backyard dog’s howl triggering refrains from a two-year-old in red tights refracted like veins in the tops of her black patent leather shoes—molten, seamed, flaring.

June 3:

How do you sing with tears in your throat, so only your lips vibrate? A piano plays a medley of “Simple Gifts,” my freshman recital solo for Becky and Bonnie and an empty sidewalk at midnight. 

June 4:

I still don’t know why Santa changed his clothes in the women’s bathroom that December, crushed red velvet and cotton balls draping over a stall like the center of a cherry cream chocolate oozing into a shallow box. 

Modern Day Scarlet Letters: 

R—Roller--Rolls eyes when no one’s looking

O—Outsiders--ThinksThe Outsiders should have been about a girl gang

B—Breaker—Breaks too many bones for words

I—Ice Nayer—Drinks water, tea, and soda without ice

N—Nature—Loves nature more than cars

June 5:

Rolling eyes when no one’s looking, she thinks The Outsiders should have had a girl gang, breaking bones, drinking water without ice, draped in flowers after racing fast cars. 

June 6:

More than the broken lip and bumped forehead from a fall to a concrete floor, she remembers a mother sewing a pink Easter cape for a child who loved dirt so much she found it in the middle of a white cotton sheet.
 

June 7:

She broke another tooth falling off a wall in a church yard, a brother’s push into more concrete turning white sharp and flat as if she were playing all three movements of Clemente’sSonatinahoping to come back to middle C.