Three Poems
Judy Is A House
Inside the dome of Judy’s skull lives five, all angry to some degree.
One weak, one sparkling, one nondescript,
Two who only emerge with drink, one who sleeps day and eve and supplies Judy with cruel dreams.
Judy’s eyes are iridescent lamps
That never shut off
Staring and lighting the way, staring into nothing.
Judy’s heart is a boiler room,
Each chamber hotter than the last
On the verge of combustion.
Judy’s fingers are hungry things,
Searching for something to tear, to scratch, to pinch.
Their pads as open as and sensitive as places down below.
Judy is a wretched house
On a sad part of town,
Aching for nothing and everything.
Her lungs are vacuums that ingest smoke of all varieties,
But the people upstairs dream of filling them with ocean
Until their burst like cheap birthday balloons.
Her mouth is the tunnel that leads things inside,
An intimate room with soft floors and sharp walls.
Things hide there and words reside, taking shape like things tangible and hard.
Judy’s ribs are windows with bars,
Covered but not much of a view,
Unless your groove is red satin walls.
Inside there is a bed of liver,
Like a sponge filled
And rung out too many times.
Judy is a haunted place
Where ghosts guide her days and memories guide her nights as she falls,
Condemned.
Zora And Xena, The Conjoined Twins
Okay, so Xena wakes staring at the boy
Lashes on his cheeks like
One dozen spider legs
Little thing, a faerie or an angel
She decides he is like a dream she doesn’t own
But he loves only me
The prettier one the other side of the bed.
Dumb old Xena, plain and lame
And not quite as whole as I am--
Because I am
Zora, Zora the better half.
Three-titted and two legged
As long as I am assertive
And I tell her,
Kiss my ass anyway, Xena, you’re just along for the ride
With your crooked teeth
And glasses.
Spider-lashed baby hides when we fight
A slash will do the both of us in
If delivered just so
Maybe that’s what we need.
Or a saw
Or perhaps a surgeon with guts.
Xena, you’re a stain on my/our memory.
My hair isn’t tangled like yours
Since I control both our arms.
Stop that crying.
Back up and stay off my back.
No pun intended.
I can change our little world
You just hold your breath.
The Fable Of The Ash Boy
Maybe it could be a fable of sorts, she decides.
She was barren in the middle and plain of face,
But she wished for a baby of her own.
Little muse to stoke her dreams
Star of her nightmares,
Where no one is true of heart,
And wolves dress like children ready for Sunday school.
She spreads out her life on paper
And often the lives of people who live in make-believe
Who are pretty and smart and special,
So unlike her and her drab ways.
Out of paper, she births her muse
Boy baby, so dear, grown of clippings
From American Baby and Johnson and Johnson ads
For that good-smelling shampoo that makes her remember her own childhood.
By candlelight she wishes her boy real.
She consults a book of spells
Given by a woman of dark skin and darker intentions.
Like Geppetto and starry nights and Blue Fairies,
She throws wishes toward stars hanging and stars falling.
Nothing.
Not a damned thing or so she thinks until a small gasps
Dry as autumn leaves,
"Mommy?"
Nearly dozing, she starts,
Off topple those black candles
Into a crib made of cardboard and shreds of nursery rhyme pages.
Over as quick as a breath
She eats the ashes and sleeps dreamless.
Donna Burgess's work has appeared or is forthcoming in many genre publications such as Sybil's Garage, Weird Tales, Brutarian, Dark Wisdom, Chizine, Not One of Us and others. When she is not writing, she enjoys running and surfing. She is also currently back in school, after a nearly twenty-year absence, pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing, with plans to move into teaching.