THE ORANGE
sits on my dashboard
it has been there for 1 week–
it has become a slouch a pucker a color I don’t know a
demented tangerine an explosion of magenta-rot odorless
and cold a burst of citrus-vein a flabby dimpled ass a cup
of stringy soup
The orange
sits on my dashboard
it has been there for 2 weeks–
it is trying to say something meaningful losing pocks by
the millisecond giving me bad advice about bed skirts
drowning in regret leaving me too old for this kind of
radical change ignoring my puffy eyes moving to a
different state slobbering down the dash no longer sweet
or round or there for me
The orange has packed its things in a mini-valise,
hitchhiked to Ocala, and refuses to forward its new
address
SAY IT ALREADY
One
How much time blinks are seconds eyelash on a thumb waiting
for wind I’m bad with hugs can we draw a picture of one
instead two people with their arms locked mugs squinched it
was on the day I was thick-wet-heat it was on the day I was
mist rising from the pond the day I tussled through the
weeds and morphed into sunflower the day the teal from your
eyes pooled in my ridges and I stared up at a nibbled sky
the day I smelled good like lemon cake
Two
It’s not easy when no one is dying and you are the sole
definition of gone not fading or lackluster or receding not
washing away shriveling or blanching but gone remember the
postcard you sent from the Alps mountains and blue sky the
ink ran through the trees let’s call it even let’s call it
what it is let’s call it anything but asphyxiation I’m
still breathing your still leaving inside this mess there
is a space a skip and an unfelt there is an empty house
full of what we never got the chance to say inside this
mess is a cloud of asbestos moving through the pulp of my
icky green chest
______________________________________
Christine Tierney’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Poet Lore, The Yalobusha Review, Sugar House Review, Weave Magazine, scissors & spackle, Monkeybicycle, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize, and the Best New Poets anthology. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Writing Program, and is employed as an after-school director.
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