One Collage, Two Poems
Inside Out
Looking backward through
an open doorway
inward the house
Coraline slept in a closet
upon feather dresses,
pillows of silken leaves
stitched for dreaming.
Her baby fingers grew into
white-gloved hands
picked sinless peaches
hanging on the tree inside-
out of the window.
One day she saw a golden
lion silently feeding
on the violets. She went outside
the backward door. He bit
her toe, but over time
she began to doubt
he was real. The unicorn
who she forgot to feed
also disappeared
or died? Letters vanished
in the orange tree. She grew
too big to fit inside
the closet. Walls were stripped
rooms turned bare. Magic
chairs had gone the way
of trees turned into kindling.
The roads inside were gone.
She searched the cupboards
to find out where
they went, mourned the long
hallways where she once ran
and flapped her wings. Her arms
ached and grew longer.
She was silent but
not broken. As green
turns to silver
a lost road wound
between the legs of a chair.
Chimney War
Have you ever seen a missile
sprouting out of a chimney?
The silver triangle roof
of your home shouldered
with weight of annihilation –
it’s another anxious dream
rising from weeds
of your subconscious
only this nuclear falcon
is worrisome, a sign
of destruction materialized
from within a symbol of body.
You’re still scarred inside
from the __________’s
forbidden words for all
you cannot forget.
It could portend invisible
illness, your immune system
gearing up for battle
about to explode!
Or it could be global,
in this era when fear
waits for someone to press
a button. You forgot about
that unlikely angel with bird wings
the one celestial being
with the power to stop war
who waits to catch cold steel
in her bare arms and hug it
like her own baby.
Copyright © 2016 by Carrie Albert