Five Poems by Margot Block

 

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 this is crisp despair

a familiar rhythm knocking at your tender skin

where each fall begins to stay the same

a pain I feel grabs hold of the heart

bringing it down to the ground

I have no graceful passion left in me

all I have is the wound of the scream

I have cut myself on hard edges

lies you think you mean

while desire touches me like a ruthless storm

leaving us broken or bruised

hoping for magic uninvited

 

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 speaking to her through paragraphs of melted poetry

the want of it said

she says escape to me in that moment

lure me

dare me to strip to this folly, pathologically naked

build me up on a promise

and set a place for us to weaken

you play my harp as seduction shapes us but never her metaphor

or the truth of her very soul as she lies to you about forever

you say you feel the heat like a fever in a dark place

and when you wake in the morn

she asks you about political insight

 

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 use your imagination to bleed it dry

for everything you never had in a single touch

a defense you never said yet bored into me

to find me caught on the land that burns

its red surfaces, its memory

the dreamstroke at midnight that recalls the epiphany of that year

where it is the diary of the poem

flat like her ginger ale

while I want to remind you of the rise

it is a dry barren land

where I am everything but nothing

speak like the goddess of Cain

lip read sorrow like you were love

when cool as beautiful

 

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 recalling deepened conversation

when you say

understanding and compassion makes us cold like winter

but do you remember mine

truth scraped over the green blackboard

while you had me displayed in poetry

I remembered the soul of us

sweet in place of a memory

where you walk out

slamming a borrowed kitchen door

when I touch our yellow

my hunger disappears

 

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 you were ripping out your heart on a fifteen minute break

it was I who remembered you there

while fixing my poetic mean streak

or a perfect you to understand

you said my love was a fickle blue heart

and grey skies tumble

then the blue sky becomes the dream

a memory of light like the God above

one you do not remember

connected to red and fire

you the newsbreaker speak

dreaming a lonely shape that will move through me

you were hearts and diamonds and clubs

like clever Alice in Wonderland

Margot Block -is a poet and student from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She has been writing since the age of fourteen and has been published in Zygote Magazine, Juice, Voices, Contemporary Verse 2, the Collective Consciousness, Grub Street Literary Magazine, Bakwa Magazine, Cholla Needles, Black Scat Review, Blanks Spaces and in the online journal BlazeVox, Kaleidoscope Online, the Bombay Review, Brief Wilderness, Oddball Magazine, the Blotter Literary Magazine, Kritikos: A Postmodern Journal of Cultural-Text-Sound & Image, Scissor and Spackle: A Journal of the Written Word, American Diversity Report & the Big Windows Review. She participated in the high school mentorship program with the Manitoba Writers Guild, working with Canadian poet, Carol Rose. She won first prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the Writers Collective and an honourable mention in a poetry contest sponsored by the Lake Winnipeg Writers Group.