only one tree --

december

in the mornings i am faced with
a clear, peony sky.
the grin in the setting moon, the sun's liniment
smoothing on the mottled, tender sunrise.

behind the house, few apples remain, frostbitten.

the before-hour, breath stilled by ice.
in the dawn it stands, still,
late in time, as the sun unfurls,
because the year is almost done.

on the solstice, night-thick reigns supreme.
on the solstice, the sun is bankrupt,
and, thus humbled, starts over.

argument

"the courage of the shut mouth, in spite of artillery!"
--sylvia plath, "the courage of shutting-up"

he goes to the store alone
to get one thing.
he lets the cat in as he goes,
and the cat is snowed-on,
trembling.
sat in the chair, serene,
with a blanket and let-down hair,
mouth a dried-out husk,
sewing in the lap,
catered-to by drafts,
curtain cord in reach,
nighttime sullen,
heart beating softly beneath the down.
i have said all i need to say.

Thank you so much for submitting your work to Breadcrumb Scabs magazine! We'd love to accept "winter night" and "a castle without a spire" for the 18th issue of the magazine. You will be updated on the progress of the issue as it draws nearer.

Thanks again, and congratulations!

Lena Judith Drake, editor-in-chief

matthew was a caveat. an afterthought,
a bottle of wild vines before,
a thunderstorm after, in the car with the seats leaned back.

i never felt anything much. i almost married him.
we were set to marry but i'm glad he put it off.
we were poor; i'm glad.

matthew said oh no so i did it. away from the house
i tried cocaine. i tried heroin. i slept with that hippy boy,
and he was good. i crawled into bed at five
smelling of black tar heroin, of the death it is.
matthew kissed me good-bye going to work
he said nothing. i'm glad.

we broke up real easy. i just said what it was:
we don't love each other.

i'm glad.

winter night

i need another blanket tonight.
the furnace is turned off so my lover
can cool down in his study, he gets fevers
when he writes; i am under 2 blankets
ear pressed to the pillow,
blankets lipping my neck.  it is cold,
in this house where we live now,
the house my grandmother and grandfather built
the room where we sleep, their room,
added on when my mother was born.
after my grandfather died my grandmother
shut up the big room with the big bed,
went to sleep in the smaller room, alone.
my grandmother is dying now.  we
brought a blanket to her room, 154,
where she dozed, wrapped up in hospital
attire, in the divan they provided her;
we tucked the blanket around her, made
jokes about cocoons, and she fell asleep
again and again.
the temperature has dropped, tonight.
i am cold.  i know my grandmother is cold;
i hope they put her red robe around her
like we asked.  i pull the blanket to my
moustache-line, warmer but not
warmed.
the cold comes in, searching.

death

faulty wiring.  we heard the sirens.  we all called him
rod the tiger guy, because he had a traveling show called
rod the reptile guy, and he had a tiger.

the tiger was named kalar.  it took him five years to get
a license to bring her to montana.  she would suck his fingers
like a baby.

there was no more tiger at this time.  he burned up in his kitchen, and his snake
burned up, and some cats burned up.

in 2006 he had an alligator, and it got away; it went into a nearby pond
and people bothered it for six hours, shot arrows, tried to fish for it
before the cops got there (this is the nature of the local cops)

after the paper was read this morning my grandmother
went to hospital for chest pains.  she is all right, but it is strange.
one day you're there.  and then--

fan

i write the poet; the email address is
4 years old.  but there is no do not reply so
i suppose it went to him.

i have spent my life wanting to discover, as a Fan,
an artist, forge a few gilded words to connect,
to have the prize of knew-you-when.   but i got taste
too late, and spent the first 24 years mooing after
crowds which mooed after the poets,
painters,
writers, bands,
now i do not know where to look.

i was born to worship, but
i always got lost driving to churches.

even in the churches- i would go looking for
the bathroom, wind up outside, not wanting to knock
disturb the peace just to be let back in.

so i mail the poets, the ones i like.
hoping they will like the mails, hoping they
are looking for the bathroom too.

hope of a countryside

the first snow has passed.
it is still october, but
it reawakens.

the jealous sound

with an eye fixed but half-unseeing,
the cantor and his guitar strumming,
the needles of it piercing through the gloom-
i thought, this is what i sound like in the other room.

the false starts, the cut-off sentences,
the baritone, falsetto and soprano, calculating,
and inaccurate, but sweet, and come to my ears,
juxtaposed, the rain is falling from the drain-pipe,
with a rush, to follow the guitar,
whose strings are not so hard-put to gild the tune-
the lilt of greeting that comes with precipitation, then fading.

he sit, and strokes the instrument
upon his knee, as i wish he would set me there
atop his lap, and stroke me thusly; the jealousy
drowns out the rain, but i go to the piano
and play, in hopes of provoking
a similar envy.  but while he thinks only of his
ballad, and his voice sings only this, i am keeping
my fingers supple for him, so that in the night
i play him softly while he lays there sleeping.

they cleaned the gutters today, and
i am still not used to hearing the rain; it sounds
as though someone is taking the garbage cans in,
over and over, because it is hitting the walls,
it is hitting the gravel.

indoors, i am happy.

eden haus

things are static here,
under the cold hard moon,
while the raindrops fall.

the bedroom window serves as
a television and it is a show
on deer and rain.  beneath the curtain
it flickers, in silence.

we are forgetting the days.  this is not so bad,
except when someone says come tuesday at ten,
and then we remember again.  it hurts to feel
responsibility, because we are tuning out its death
like one of a friend.  when it resurfaces
we drink it away.  we
cry and cry.

things are stagnant here,
beneath the clotted moon,
as the day dawns grey
and the scene is the constant
pinprick flicker of rain
off-air.

another haiku.  actually it's a lie because it snowed october 7.

hello montana
hangdog faces meet
the first snow october 8
as we don our gloves.

2 haikus
(i am on the road)

moving from chicago
we first saw the stars
on a wednesday morning as
we left the motel.

fall in wyoming
fall in wyoming
lays a moist embrace upon
all the barren hills.

Dear Buckley,
Thanks so much for giving us the chance to read your work.
Your poem, "an artist, a lament," made it into the last round of consideration, but for reasons of space, we can't use it for Melusine right now.
Please feel free to submit work again at any time in the future.

Best,
Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom

-----------------------

<3
moving madness.  soon i will be in montana to do nothing but write.

spider

there's a spider on my ceiling,
moving quickly, i can see him
darting, from the corner of my eye;
his graceful thoughtless movements
make me wonder if he is the one
who's right-side up
rather than i.

homage to a pretty girl

when we came to a wider spot in the road she
lay on her back in the mud with the trees bowing over
her, hair in a fan in the leaves and mud and she
kicked off her boots and put her toes into the water.
she took a dirty finger and drew a stripe down her
nose and one under each eye.  i watched her look up at the trees
the way some people do nurses, with a quiet hot supplication
and disdain, and she said:
"i know i am going to die.  my mother cries day and night because
god does not answer her prayers and i haven't the heart to tell her
there's no god involved.  she thinks it is her fault and when
she tires of that she thinks it is my father's fault
and then that it is my fault.  on the latter she is right but
it takes her days to come out and admit it."
i lit a cigarette and she motioned me for a drag.
"i am not home all day and sometimes i don't come home
during the night.  i don't want to eat the meals she cooks
for me.  i don't want her sad pitying eyes."
she fluffed her hair on the mud and leaves.
"it's so cold out here.  i don't have the body to stay warm
and i don't care."
we were fifteen.  she wore black jeans and a black sweater
to school every day and her brown hair hung long down her back.
she cursed at us when we ate lunch but if i stayed upstairs for the
hour to study she begged me to eat.  i watched her wither
and one day like a flower she bent and had a heart attack
and died.
at her funeral the priest said a lot of things but he
never mentioned any numbers.  i took her size 0 jeans home and
waited until i could fit into them.  when my hipbones got like
spoon curves i put on the jeans and went to pay her a visit,
asked her to be proud of me and rolled in the dirt trying to
spoon it out of her grave.  she never answered
and i left her there as thin as she wanted, took off the jeans and set them
neatly folded on the gravestone, and in my panties and socks made
my way to the gate of the cemetery where a policeman was called to
take me back home.

teeth

i wonder if stravinsky
had teeth like he composed.  my mother
got dentures at 53 because she never
took care of the real ones.  i have a
cavity in each of my molars, one in a
canine that juts pale yellow
like a cliff, one behind between
the two front teeth.  i am listening to
stravinsky and his flights of
fancy.  i am going to the dentist
tomorrow.  thanks to the insurance
it will be the first in a line of visits
and the dentist will laugh at the money he'll make
will cry at the wreckage before him.
i think of my mother and wonder
if dentures are an option at
24.  my teeth are weak and moreover
i give
less than a shit about
them.
i pray for their resurrection because my
lover loves dentists, floss, swish and brushing.
he worships his teeth.  since mine came in crooked
i have spent the bulk of my
otherwise-occupied life attempting
to forget
that they
exist.  not having
the money for braces
i watched it like a deformity
among the pearlywhite teenagers of my
youth, and when the time came said
lover got hot for me
thanks to my rotting fangs.  still,
tooth decay is the #1 cause of
bad breath.  it is a choice between
molars, morals or kissing.
i fear the dentist.  i fear his
drills and his novocaine and his
neverending patience.  i like his
nitrous.  and above everything
i am fond of kissing.  so the choice
draped in tartared defiance
is not really mine.

had to answer this.

my first word was "gook", at 8 months.
i was trying to say "book".

so there.

regina, if you are reading this, scroll down one more poem.  i wrote this after i wrote you!

a close call
or, exclamation marks

it is getting to a point in summer, where,
speeding past the day, i am perpetually
dewy; in the heat of summer and the internal heat of
amphetamines i sweat constantly as i mull over
rejection letters.  pull my shawl around my sticky shoulders
in the air condition of the office, read again and again:
"an empty well was a close call..." i grind my teeth and smile
through the squeak of it.  i sweat.  think of cigarettes
for the tenth time in a day, ponder poetry, wonder if a modern age
still calls for poetry, lick my drying lips,
smile, write
this.

everything is so!!  fucking!!!  exciting today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sometimes the world is so stuffed
full of beauty
i can't
take
it.

i do not have internet lately.  not sure if this is a blessing or a curse.  here is a poem.

varicose veins

and here, the signs of age have
Troubled Me --
and here, i am not a girl
any more,
(i am 24)
a woman, burdened with the scars and veins,
not in the least responsible, boasting
a companion for a bed, selfsame pantlegs
primed to hem, a bosom that is sinking,
a life lived hidden in the secret that
i hate having an age,
i do not want to die.