How’s Therapy?
It’s like I’m two different people.
I make Jekyll and Hyde
look like children.
I drink until I drown.
I smoke until I burn.
I can’t come—
to bed I’ll get cemented in.
I’m a monster because I have said so,
a rusty truck stop where lovers go to die
or shoot up in the bathroom.
Or did you mean to ask
“What’s wrong with you?”
Ask the stars.
Ask what they’ve heard.
One Day:
Lover, I will leave you in the same sluggish way
a fly leaves a swollen, oozing, stinking carcass.
In the same way golden clouds gradually pull
from a snow-capped mountain.
In the same way a half-assed breath hacks phlegm
from the lungs of a smoker,
like a machete against envy-green jungle leaves.
I will leave you
just as you’ve left God,
as you’ve left the dust to collect
on your writers’ desk.
I will not be the one
to hold your drunken frame,
your tar filled heart, your
promises like empty water
bottles at the bottom of the ocean,
your impossible smile,
your impossible smile,
your impossible smile.
Ghosts:
after Anne Sexton
Some ghosts are my fathers
neither selfish nor selfless
their guitars wahwahwahing
through the neighborhood.
Not artists, but ghosts
who frowned and shook their heads
at the Billboard top 100.
Not all ghosts are fathers.
I observe them at the music store,
thumbing through records with a high brow,
like they could ever come close.
Not pretentious, but ghostly.
This one’s playing Stairway.
But that isn’t all.
Some of my ghosts are lovers.
Not all there. Not too stable.
Like a swimmer in a glimmering lake
moments before jaws grip onto my ankle
and drag me down, down, down.
—
Deirdre Cardona is a turtleneck aficionado who often fantasizes about owning a really big chair so she can greet guests with a slow spin while petting a lop-eared bunny. She’s worked as a poetry editor for Cypress Dome Literary Magazine and her work has appeared in Roseblood Magazine. Send her love letters at twitter.com/queengizard.
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