Expressionists 2016
8 years ago / in Bliss
Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the unveiling of Expressionists!
As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to have two poems selected for this year’s publication. So, without further ado, I will let the words speak for themselves…
As I unzip your sweater from
the crook of your neck
down, past the indent
of your belly button,
meeting the waistband of your
old, grey sweatpants,
your underwear reveals itself.
And as I pull the old t-shirt,
stained with grease of your old cars,
over your head,
I recognize the distinct
yet generic
hue of red and remember that it was
the shirt I grasped onto
as I learned to ride a bike.
And as I roll down the fraying
sweatpants past your knees
followed by the sly underwear,
now fully revealed,
it hits me.
As you sit, slumped over in
your chair before me,
vulnerable, naked,
as a continuous stream of drool
spills from a mouth of a head,
permanently hung in defeat,
it hits me.
As I take your hands and lean my weight
backwards,
catapulting you upwards from your
chair and into the tub,
and as the water continues to run,
I stick my fingertips in its
steady stream, testing the water’s temperature,
it hits me.
And as I squeeze soap onto a
washcloth and begin to create
steady circles across the expanse
of your hunched back,
it hits me.
You dressed me,
but now I dress you.
You fed me,
but now I feed you.
You bathed me,
but now I bathe you.
And I can do nothing but
watch the photographs,
the flashes of your memory
the parts of you disappear,
because trying to save them is like
grasping at the suds that
swirl down the drain.
They say that people
from Los Angeles are called
Angelenos,
which sounds a lot
like angels, but despite
wandering down a walk
lined with the fabricated
well-marketed
names of stars,
the people who push
carts filled with cans
emptied by other lips
are hard to place in
this landscape of heaven.
Maybe because I can’t see
their wings through the ragged
Disneyland sweatshirts
or the hole-ridden socks that
reveal seemingly permanent
black stained heels,
rough with the tread
of back alleyways
you don’t imagine you’d
find amongst His stars.
And as I follow them to
the piles of cans that surround
the makeshift cardboard
homes they’ve built,
a colony of heaven underneath
an overpass, I start to wonder
if they are misinformed.
Hannah Jane
Just a girl sharing the baubles she loves & the bliss she experiences!
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