Breadcrumb #401

CAROLINE REDDY

I had to give up nicotine years ago.
Now my fingers grip bamboo chopsticks
not for salty udon noodles or slurps of sake
but for green tea, steamed broccoli and brown rice--
with sauce on the side.

I miss the inhales and exhales:
tree pose isn’t enough to kill the memory of the taste.

Cloves and black lungs,
coughs and the ashy residue, 
make it easier for long stares that occur
at 5. a.m;
looking at up at the ceiling
where lines spread the shape of spider legs
across the creeping shadows.

The white noise of the fan,
the cuddling,
and coos of my lover
isn’t enough to tune me out of me.

I miss the inhales and exhales
tree pose doesn’t kill the memory of the taste.

I want to hum a silly song
just to occupy that space:
a quiet field where dandelions and kites
breeze behind a canopy of purple leaves.

• • •

Breadcrumb #400

ALICE RIDDELL

Warmth and moisture for those walking,
Through the cold and dry stillness.
Listen though, hard,
To cadaverous tête-à-tête.
No tongues to wag,
Yet in the chambers and cambers to be had,
Be sure of cranium conversations.

Cavernous caves created,
By femurs skipped and crisscrossed,
Skulls stacked to rest on one another in peace.
Immortalization of calcium and collagen,
Ostentatious osteopathy?
Or merely grottos to genuflect respect,
Of those no longer able.

A saintly Saint; string her up and let her spin,
And a Whizz bang pop not.
Flesh and charcoal denied,
Wheels to shatter at her touch.
Coptic, gnostic, Oh Alexandria!
Your holiness one to contemplate,
Milk flows and fireworks.

Catherine and her sewers,
Yet she isn’t down there, in Hugo’s conscience of the city,
Though others abide in such underground ossuaries.
Roberspierre, Roberspierre, where for art thou rosaries?
Lost in La Fontaine of anti-youth.
And what of Rome and subterranean saints?
Stephen in Commodilla, Callixtus in San Callisto.  

Contained in embalmment and entombment,
Deny no tears and deteriorate,
Now really de-compose yourself!
Preservation most precious to those remaining,
But to decay into clay and minerals,
Is to feed the soil and those that slither,
Worms slip through eye sockets and into maturity.  

Mausoleum for the beautiful doomed,
Or sepulcher, even cenotaph,
Mocked by the unmarked catatonics in catacombs and crypts.
Charnel house to house unsaved souls,
Far from the saved coffined in safe cemeteries.
So many semantic spaces to hold the dead,
Cryptic messages for the gravely serious.

We must not forget her,
They made a cult for her,
Hail Catherine and her left hand of heat.
Vestal intercessor of divine interlocution,
Whose wheel lives on to spin,
Spirals of virginal potassium and powder potent,
Aesthetic pyrotechnics; a prayer to the martyr.

Forsaken souls shake the living,
Invitations to tunnel into the cracks.
Coaxing claws crumble at the warmth,
Tarsals kick and scramble back to the dark.
None such be blessed,
My sunken seraphim and covet cherubim,
In the maze below with Catherine and me.

• • •

Breadcrumb #399

CLAIRE DURAND-GASSELIN

A souvenir
in a gift shop
at the doors of reality

This is what I would like
my life
to look like
when it’s done:

A plate, with a quote from my mom,
and another one with a quote from my dad,
facing each other

A postcard,
with a picture of an elephant sitting at a pond,
quietly feeding the ducks

A miniature house,
with a real tree
and a dusty light bulb on the porch

A snow globe,
of skyscrapers and
plastic flakes
in the shape of letters

A keychain,
that is also
a key
to something unknown.

or
one of those bottles
filled with layers
of colored sand

Colors of all the places
and people
I knew and loved
the wrong or the right way

layers of the years
spent as some one
or another one

pigments for all the images
I saw and made
salt for the dried tears
and fragments of the broken vase
I am

and at the bottom
like a foundation
some thick golden sand
from la p’tite plage
where I spent my hours
chasing seashells
in Brittany.

and in the mix
of all this
diffused and
discreet
a drop of mud
for all the pain
of my family.

Sealed with beeswax
as a tribute
to nature
standing still
on a shelf
like a mountain
or a tree

Then somebody would come
and grab me
and drop me
maybe by accident
And the wind would blow
And I would disperse my self
in textured particles
becoming dust
in heaven.

• • •

Breadcrumb #398

OLIVIA MARDWIG

On the first morning in Budapest, I awoke on the top bunk in an empty hostel room. The ceiling was inches from my face. To my left, an open window where the hard rain pecked the glass like rice. At a long wooden communal table I was drinking tea. It was probably early, though the ever-present clouds made it feel timeless.

    Across from me was a man. The man was named Bill. An American, an old hippy, long faded blonde hair gathered into a ponytail. Wore a shirt from a California restaurant with a slice of pizza and the words, “Pizza My Heart”. He was thin and tall, spoke slow but energetically. We talked about a few things before we got down to what he called “the great tragedy of his life.”

    As a boy, in the summer, his family would go to a house by the lake. Somewhere West Coast. Sometime in the 60’s. From the long wooden dock he watched his brother drown, a twisted body in the open water. No boats. Nobody else around. He called for help and help didn’t come.

“From the long wooden dock he watched his brother drown, a twisted body in the open water.”

     I felt this loss personally, although I couldn’t tell you why. I had never met this boy. And if he had lived, he would be an old man now and I still would have never met the boy.

    Back then I was still too young to have a tragedy like that to share with Bill. But I did have something to offer. I told him the story of myself in all its brevity. Then, I got up to get ready for the day. Even in the rain, I thought I’d cross the bridge to the old city, climb the castle in the damp and mist and moss to the aerial view of the parliament building.

    When I was on my out Bill was still at the table, unmoved since I left him, as far as I could tell. He said that if I were a real writer, I would write my story down. Some days I think I might actually do it.

• • •

Breadcrumb #397

LIZ KELSO

I, too ugly
for new men
with fresh shaped beards
to chest
dual sleeved with
tattoos of stories
& depth

                                                                                                            I, too old
                                                                                                            for older men
                                                                                                            who want round
                                                                                                            young thighs
                                                                                                            to squeeze
                                                                                                            to suck
                                                                                                            to juice

I, too fat
for slick quad men
bulging
for bunnies in
spandex—snapping
IG eye candy
#fitspo

                                                                                                            I, too human
                                                                                                            for men of meta
                                                                                                            -physical mind
                                                                                                            & mantras
                                                                                                            dreadlocked
                                                                                                            crystal rocked
                                                                                                            vegan shocked

• • •