Craven. (prose poem?)

I feel nailed, hammered in. Craven. I do not know the dictionary definition of the word but it's the word I want to describe the pain I feel when a sob causes my shoulders to pinch in, makes my chest concave with the blow of dismissal. Craven. Probably the wrong word.

I wrote a letter to Bill Clinton when I was in the fourth grade. He wrote back, with his rubber-stamped signature. My mother had the letter laminated. I didn't know it; I thought it was a plastic pocket for the letter, so I could still take it out and touch the fancy paper. I peeled apart the plastic, thinking it was like a zip-lock bag, but the paper adhered and split in two revealing a chasm of dry, tree pulp. I'd ruined it. I yelled at my mother. She blamed my ignorance.

I felt spite toward her, toward "You don't know." I think it's because I did know, I knew what I'd done to the letter, rent it in it's mangled laminate package. I knew what that felt like. I knew I'd wanted a frame, the possibility of exit from the slim place between two panes of glass, anything but stagnant.

First (second draft)

This is a second draft of a poem that was originally in a sequence.

First



In the hot tub everyone was nearly naked, my skin
screaming pink from the steam, heat. The snow just starting
to fall so we threw each other
in and out of the bubbling water, yelling
from the shock of cold—
hot, then cold. White flakes dusted her black hair,
in every part of its braid,
in her long long lashes.

They dared us to kiss. They chanted, fists splashing
to the rhythm—Do it, do it, do it. Wincing,
my white fingers on her brown neck I slid my tongue
into her vacant mouth.
She wouldn't close her eyes—she stiffened.

I'm sorry. We toweled off,
silent except for the laughter in the next room
and the cotton dragging against her skin and water
drying. Her braid trailed her turned face
reminded me of a dash in a sentence.

Her mouth moved on its own this time,
but I only heard, First.

Untitled. For now, Sleep.

He's asleep, his mouth wide with the fury of an idiot. Dulled
by the chemical soup of sleep, the muscles in his face lax
lacking any tension, no winks or twitches--stasis
except his roving eyes, which wander over the inside of his eyelids.
His long lashes closed together like a Venus fly trap.

His lungs pull the air into his gaping mouth, I watch.
I could say anything in his ear
my hand a fetter to his wrist
still
bound.