Cheryl Snell
Recital
She needs help from bed to bath
to kitchen and must not forget
her stanzas or the big pink hat.
Onstage, she vamps for time. Cataract
eyes adjust to the trickster dark;
she slapsticks a grapple with the mic,
swirls a silk scarf around her neck.
Someone yells *nice hat!* Lifting the brim
like Chaplin, she scowls at the audience;
it surges toward her and the air grows taut
with listening.
She argues against loss, rolls each syllable
through lines that reach past what she chose
to lose and what she longed to abandon.
Hand on hat, she stands as if she expects
a puff of smoke to topple it, leaving her
exposed, hair on end, skull pulsing
with truths she won’t speak aloud.
|
Cheryl Snell is a two- time Pushcart Prize nominee with current work in Snow Monkey, Astropoetica, The Centrifugal Eye, Wicked Alice and Aurora Review. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Flower Half Blown (Finishing Line Press, 2002) and Epithalamion (Little Poem Press, 2004). Her novel, Shiva’s Arms, will be out next year from Writer’s Lair Books. email: Cheryl Snell
|
h
|