Breadcrumb #403

MELANIE CALANTROPIO

I wipe the sweat from my forehead and
admire the flowers -
I have waited all year for them to grow.
I have watered them,
felt their petals on my soft fingers,
clenched the soil between them and sobbed
on my knees, submissive to dirt
grateful
you tell me the beauty lies in the impermanence
but I long for something tangible
the sour taste of sap, dripping from you -
a promise.
when you are gone, they are flaccid
bent over, praying
for redemption
they turn to dust.
our daughter wants to know,
"will we disappear too?"

• • •

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.

• • •