I’ve started bringing some fiction to the blog on Mondays and have been focusing on poetry recently. I have been invited to present poetry at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor’s Writer’s Festival in February, based on a few snippets of work I have completed in the past, so I’m now taking some time to draft a few new pieces to accompany my presentation. Here is another poem in progress. An oldie but a goodie.
cigarettes
it was never a question,
she sitting on the ledge dangling her feet over, so high,
looking down once to be sure that people still existed,
but it always left her in wonder.
was this it?
the first time it occurred to her she was standing
in The Met with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth
before the Jackson Pollock, the one she hated
and the attendant who came frantically
screaming
deploring she and her cigarette.
so she left.
was this it?
in the rain she asked this trying to find
where the red line would let her off south
of Sacks and north of Dolce
cigarette lit, sending the waves of poison
to those around her who frowned.
was this it?
she had been a model once for an artist
on the upper east side
and had been told smoking had made her
breasts sag and had turned her body into a canvas
for human depravity
which suited the artist just fine.
was this it?
her shoe slipped off her foot and fell rapidly
to the world below that was but a haze so high up with
she on the ledge looking down with her
cigarette dangling from her mouth
which promptly followed suit, falling
away from her to the world below, which would
gather around it and call it “killer” and
cite it in some commercial claiming truth
while she, for she did what she had always
intended and pushed herself from the ledge
and fell from the heavens down to the earth below
would not be stood around or mourned
would be taken to the morgue and then buried
forgotten.
and that was it.
***
Maybe you have some poetry or fiction you’d like to share. Leave a link in the comments below!
© 2011, Preston. All rights reserved.
