9 :10 TO GLASGOW
Perched like daggers
thrown at a wall,
precarious, brittle
with a beauty
that breaks,
Scottish birds fly
on black wings
honed and polished
to an inorganic
shine, sharp
silhouettes pinned
to a grey sky.
FLOOR CRAFT
Charming is in the library,
fingering the artifacts of our first dance,
the remains of the night
I sawed my toes off one by one
for a shoe that did not fit.
He'll be down soon enough;
I think tonight it will be phalanges
run one by one through the fine hairs
at the nape of my neck.
Or just as likely, his left capitates
will break the skin of the cheekbone
he once versed by sonnet and song.
I have learned the use of each bone,
even after tendons powder and fall away.
I have learned to dance crippled,
to turn my unbalanced box-step photogenic.
While I have the time,
I inscribe figure-eights in my red dress.
I waltz Miles Davis across acres
of concrete ballroom.
The mop keeps perfect frame.
THE REPTILE
There is an alligator in my eye.
You are at your most honest at
my breast. I am at my coldest.
I love the third.
There is an alligator in my eye.
It flinches, considers you with ice
in its veins, waits with razors
in its teeth. You stand behind
me so you can't see it and it
can't see you. But you know.
I know. We all know.
You are at your most honest
at my breast. I tell my best lies
there: if this is a transaction
I can live with it. If this is good
bye, I will miss you. Really.
I will not say what is true.
I love the third, the phantom
the ghost that haunts my bed.
LYRA
When the windows shattered,
I did not mind. After the dust and the sulfur,
I could finally breathe again.
When the electricity was extinguished,
I was relieved. I went to the roof and found
my namesake constellation.
When the bomb took down my wall,
I wept in gratitude: it made a door
where there had been none.
The newspapers named the dead.
There, in print, they promised:
it would all be done tomorrow.
When the enemy took my son,
I went into the street and found another,
a better son with a mouth as wide
and empty as a baby bird's.
And when the bombs silenced
and the screaming stopped,
I broke apart like a dropped vessel:
I had waited too long
to be counted among the survivors.
A .L.Rodenberg is a writer working in both poetry and
fiction. She graduated with a MA in Creative Writing from the University
of Lancaster. Ms. Rodenberg's first published poem, "Apocrypha," appeared in Smiths Knoll in 2006 and will be included in an upcoming collaboration of poetry and art at the Tate Museum in
London. Her most recent adventures in prose include completing National
Novel Writing Month and a digital fiction work-in-progress located
at http://sites.google.com/site/shorehwy/apartment .
Ms. Rodenberg lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C.
