Breadcrumb #373

RAX KING

A lady tells me, wake me at 42nd Street.
Colonial column of a lady, and was she fine!
Was she lovely! The gathering of age
in rivulets of wrinkle, hair silvering thin itself.

I think, it has been years since I was anything
a stranger might call fine. It warms my guts:
to be un-fine. Greasy and grimy, even fresh
from the bath. Like a rock a worm calls home.

I let the train pass 42nd Street before I wake her just to see
how haughty she will snip at me, but she shrugs,
her back as straight in sleep as a shaker chair,
snaps her eyes back shut like a crocodile’s.

• • •

 

Breadcrumb #372

JD DEHART

Let me dress,
that thread you pull,
let me weave it
and wind it up,
like a spinning top,

Please say it's
my color, please compliment
me.  I try to stand on my
own two feet but I slip
my teeth across kind words,
how they fill me.

I'm just another restless
voice looking for someone
to say, Well said.

I still have my wisdom
teeth, but I lack the wisdom
to stop dressing up,
to stop my stage-prancing
vocalizations.

The performance continues
until I'm tired
of the masks and all.

• • •

Breadcrumb #370

JOSHUA LINDENBAUM

We look side to side like we’re being booked into prison,
and we are.
But it’s not our fault:

it all started when we were taught to look both ways when crossing the street.
Look left, and then right
so you stay safe.

Next came you turning to your friend to ask
“what’d you get on the test?”
Next came you looking at your body in the mirror,
measuring it with media’s ruler
Next came you weighing yourself against your sibling
Your friends
And as you get older,
your younger self.

Comparisons is the everyday person’s assessment:
a high-stakes exam
where test anxiety is inevitable,

but I choose to opt-out.

• • •

Breadcrumb #369

ERIN TAYLOR

"you were not meant to thrive here.”
she told me, as she put out her cigarette.
                         her teeth are piling in the corner,
                         they’re yellowed and brown
                         with nicotine.

               my baby teeth are piling by the stove,
               a reminder of why she is here.

we eat spaghetti for the fifth time this week,
we sweat. we burn.
                       one hundred degree oklahoma heat,
the air conditioner stopped running two summers ago.

I am panting on the sidewalk,
outside the crumbling house.

          in the spring time, whirling winds take the chosen away
          far from                                    here,
          yet in the summer we all burn under the scorching light.

• • •