Five Poems by RC deWinter

 

dead man’s bride

knowing it’s my own fault

i've become resigned

to being desired but never taken

the armour is too heavy

and who walks the world

carrying a blowtorch?

the days of brave and crazy fools 

are almost over and those remaining are never brave

only hungry for new flesh

so i lumber through life upright 

and correct in the corset of promise

and as my body burns 

in the liquid flame of passion 

i touch myself 

with the sere and yellowed bones 

of memory

call me pandora

i was greedy

and curious and wilful

i wanted it all 

i opened that box

out flew lies out flew death

out flew everything

no one in their right mind would want

 

now i sit

in the autumn of my life

clutching that box

that holds my birthstone

and only my birthstone

an amethystine shimmer

that is my only treasure

 

i cling to life

on a slender thread

called hope

as a sapless leaf

catches on to a spiderweb

to avoid falling

to its death

The Virtual Wife

 

If pixels on a screen were pen on paper,

if words sent through the ether

were mailed in a letter,

I’d be a paper wife.

 

I am distant, convenient and much too readily available.

I make few demands, and those I put forth,

while often promised fulfilment,

are always and inevitably ignored.

 

I don’t want to be the spinster Belle of Amherst,

writing, always writing to her Master.

I’m sick of being a crutch left in the corner

‘til another ankle’s twisted.

 

But I remain – not even fashioned, as was Blodeuwedd,

from the fragile beauty of flowers – only paper.

No, there is no more pen to paper.

I am pixels.

 

Disembodied, voiceless, remote,

I am the phantom on the periphery

of the plateau of reality.

I am Everyman’s dream – the virtual wife.

cliché-verre

 

i reinvent myself every day,

rearranging my molecules 

to suit the season.

the weather.

my mood.

a portrait on glass

that when exposed to light

becomes the me of the moment.

 

it’s a time-consuming process –

not always completely accurate,

but i don’t worry about that.

we all project what we carry 

onto what we see anyway.

 

i don’t save these multiple mes.

no matter the time, just before sleep

i burn the latest me with no regrets,

knowing some version or another 

will always be there

waiting to be reinterpreted

on a fresh plate.

 

before i discovered cliché-verre

there were days couldn’t rise

under the weight of a slagheap 

of the coal ash of sorrow

heaved up from history 

and hardened into an everest of grief.

 

this ritual reinvention is what 

keeps me breathing.

to rise and live as much as i'm able 

until the next ritual burning 

of the me created for just that day.

 

NB: cliché-verre

also known as the glass print technique, is a type of "semiphotographic" printmaking. An image is created by various means on a transparent surface, such as glass, thin paper or film, and then placed on light sensitive paper in a photographic darkroom, before exposing it to light. This acts as a photographic negative, with the parts of the image allowing light through printing on the paper.

 

Late Escape

The roses alongside the house

bloom in the captivity of a prearranged pattern, 

the vision of a small mind more concerned

with neat and tidy than with nature.

I wonder if they know the heartache

of the unfree

espaliered to the whims of power.

I would like to free them to bloom in whatever way

best suits the nature of their being, 

but am afraid they have grown too rigid

and brittle with age

to do anything but break after being tethered

so long to such an artificial construct.

And so, in my selfish craving

for their beauty and their scent

i leave the roses as they are: 

prisoners of what never should have become familiar

and is now a necessity.

I know something of brittleness

and the rigidity of fear.

It has taken me most of my life to

escape the cross on which, 

like those roses, I was crucified –

all of us sacrifices to the narrowness

of ignorant convenience.

I never was, nor will be, as beautiful,

even in their captivity, as those blossoms, 

but i have known something they never will: 

the intoxication of growing freely in

my own wild way

 

RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (NY Times/2017), The Connecticut Shakespeare Festival Anthology (River Bend Bookshop Press, 12/2021) in print: 2River View, Event Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, the minnesota review, Plainsongs, Prairie Schooner, Southword, the ogham stone, York Literary Review among many others and appears in numerous online publications.