Ursula Can't Sleep Through the Night
She tosses and turns
in an unfit slumber.
Her coral chamber too hot.
Her little purple nightie
soaked with the familiar cold sweat,
as if mussels had invaded her bed in the night.
Clammy.
Ursula conjures up a midnight snack of
spiced eels and curried clown fish.
She changes her clothes,
a fresh night gown laid out
earlier in the evening on the bedside table
as she does every night.
She later dreams feverishly of
Ariel returning to her.
Her young body unblemished by time.
Her wish of human love.
Her youthful aspirations clear and untarnished
by hormones gone haywire.
Ariel, with her flame-red hair returns less and less
in the later years of Ursula’s life.
Her presence spotty; sometimes Ursula
doesn't think of her for a year or more,
and then she shows up again
in the middle of the night.
Ariel is as interruptive as ever,
making a jealous mess of her mind.
Ursula turns on the oldies station and hears
the popular songs of her youth being played.
‘This cannot be!’ she exclaims,
‘How can ‘Under the Sea’ be on the oldies station?’.
The Strength of Nature
You know, sometimes
I will get really frustrated with life,
thinking back to times when
things seemed easier for me.
They weren't necessarily easier.
I think that once enough time
has passed
from a period in life,
that you're likely to
elaborate your memories:
to glamorize,
to blur the suffering;
the trials of time that
you may have experienced then,
because your current situation
strikes so loudly within.
In these times
where I feel hopeless,
I try to recall the strength of nature.
The turtle I witnessed
crossing a six lane highway
a couple of summers ago:
the fastest I have ever
seen a turtle move.
I like to imagine
his or her little face,
taut with tension:
little turtle teeth
gritted against the odds,
little turtle arms and legs
flapping maniacally
against the hot asphalt.
I never saw it complete its journey,
but it was in the lane
closest to the shoulder.
The odds were six to one.
For days afterward
on the way home
I would look in that area
to see if the turtle had made it.
I celebrated in a small victory
each time
I did not see
a broken turtle shell
askew
on the side of the highway.
Pandora Does an Unboxing Video
She looks defiantly into the camera lens
as she wraps her long-taloned hands
around the edge of the blood-red wooden box.
It is ancient, yet youthful, with a blinking third eye
carved into the middle of the lid.
She says,
‘Don’t forget to mash that ‘like’ button
if you like what you see!’
She cackles as she rubs her fingertips
almost erotically
across the bottom of the box
as she hoists it from its resting place
at the center of the golden pedestal.
She indicates with lurid hand motions
to click the ‘subscribe’ button in the corner.
She shrieks as the floor shakes violently
beneath her aching hooves,
the quaking makes her stumble
causing her pitch black hair
and all the nightmares within
to tumble into her vacant eyes.
She clumsily fumbles with the box,
it stutters in mid-air:
touching her clawed hands
bouncing again and again,
like a mulliganed football
in the height of playoffs week.
She gestures off camera
to some beast or demon
to zoom in on this important feature.
The box crashes to the floor.
Every chaotic manner of sound
clashes one against the other:
the tail of a snake slithers into view
for just a moment
before she pulls it out, devours it whole.
The box pours black ooze onto the floor:
a feast of screeching cockroaches a crawling chorus of song,
scarabs roll out in a tide of wings and dung,
wheel bugs with giant red stinger fangs, grinning garishly,
lice and ticks carouse on a mutated dire wolf’s back,
the wretched hands of time reach out, thick and cracked with age,
giant student loans all due in this moment,
the already too-high rent suddenly doubled.
She bends her head off-camera
to grimace and burp
the heartburn of a thousand ages,
reaches into the box and
pulls out her Sephora haul
while she grins with childlike wonder,
pushes its other contents back inside and
closes the box,
placing it back on the pedestal.
Pandora has saved us
once again.
A Day at the Museum
Has anyone else noticed
in studying Van Gogh's
The Cafe Terrace that
when you look into
the night sky
there are ghosts of the
buildings he had painted there before,
that he painted over?
Perhaps
to save money on canvas
or to repaint his memory of
the haunted patio chairs,
the echoes of unwanted stares of patrons
who had written him off as a madman.
Perhaps he was a madman.
But aren't we all in some way
unhinged, lonely,
feeling dissonant from the
current cultural climate
that begs of you
quiet compliance?
Perhaps we should all
paint over our ghostly
buildings of the past,
walk down the cobbled lane
to the unknown future
that's never promised to us,
in a spirit of hopeful wonder.
Astrape's Arms Grow Tired
She comes in:
cheeks darkened,
lightning behind the eyes.
You can see the cumulus begin to coil into something else.
She twists her arms,
wringing them out, lightning
bringing on the wind.
A violent tinge of grey plays behind wisps of hair.
Cheeks stark as winter trees.
Brows furrowed as the grasses spring has gathered at the culverts.
She shouts:
a thunderous echo bounces,
her voice sparks a light in the darkness,
zigzags down to the ground.
She succumbs,
after much precipitation,
to the idea
that not all days must be black.
The clouds part.
She lets the sun in for a while
to dry her weather-beaten hair
back into a natural twist,
to lengthen the day again
with a yellow sky,
a lightened mind.
April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendour of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.
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