The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Barbara J. Orton

AFTER TRYING TO DIE

Amazing what you can get away with:
debts forgiven, friends who still call,
parents who visit you in the hospital
though they remember what you did.
Love is tenacious as a weed:
I've tried to root it out, wanting my death
to leave me, if not unremembered,
at least unmourned; but it's hard to kill.
Now that I want to live,
I suppose I'm grateful for it, though
it's hard to bear so much forgiveness,
as if each day I had to kneel and give
thanks, not to the God that left me, but to
each old friend's weary, unforgetful face.



CHARYBDIS

a mouth that makes whirlpools     a mouth
that eats narwhals    a mouth that no longer
kisses   speaks   or cries     a mouth of hunger
a mouth that never pauses to take breath 
a mouth that sucks in whole sailing ships
and swirls them like raw wine     a mouth that tastes
the salt of bodies     the sharp points of masts
and spits out shattered hulls like olive pits
a mouth that never tallies what was lost
a mouth lipless     tongueless     a mouth that was
devourer of cattle     a mouth hurled
deep into the sea     a mouth so vast
we cannot pity it     a mouth that says
Shhhhh      shhhhh      loud enough to drown the world





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