Premiere Generation Ink.

Lie Still

Hear these voices.
Murmuring at times,
Deafening at others.
Telling you the steps to your history
Voices that twist (to be sure you are not lost)in the world,
turning their necks, to watch you.
With spider stealth,
The words slap into your brain these things:
Wedding Rings, Matching Coffee Cups, Diaper Changes, Mini-Vans.
Proof you live behind neatly pruned hedges and rows of marigolds.
But you have gazed at the hedges and wonder what lives beyond them.
These voices, on the edge of their tones,
Lie the maps to places where their syllables cannot reach.
In your head, where you are alone,
between the Barbie dolls in your childhood to 9 a.m. conference calls,
You have conversations with your impending Darkness,
when your soul shuts off your body,
Where you wonder how you will set your head for the last time,
what the last words you will utter,
the last face your eyes will craddle.
What is that last moment?
But you stuff this conversation into your gut,
Throwing business cards into its mouth,
pouring God into its eyes and turn to hear your voice.

Melissa Tennen

This poem is appearing in the Poetry Journal
Premiere Generation Ink. Volume 1 Number 2

Order this Book Subscribe to PGI
Author's Bio | Feedback | Email Poem to a friend | Read a Random Poem
* Send an e-postcard of this poem with a photo *