USA

kmitomle@artsci.wustl.edu

Sitting in the Attic

The sunbeam shines chrysanthemums, warm, a straight
Bamboo until it pierces sullied windows.
It rides me, breaking shining locks
That trickle down my face and hands, illuminating
Stains of painted beauty blazed across
An aging frame of copper bones.

A splash of rays against the black,
A coat of white soapy dust,
My suffocating lungs are battered reservoirs
For smoke and masochism and ancient fumes
That curdle parchment walls to blistered sores.

The light spear sears two hollow pupils,
Blinding me to solitude,
Cracks me with an aging knuckle,
Chokes me like a bursting lover's heart and
While I sit in soft perennial haze,
Chalk lines gouge the River Lethe
And death creeps, a thief amid the shadows
Of wilting memories.

Birch

In dawn you stand, a bleached and paling tone
As rays slip higher up grooves etched and worn
By insects twisting treads in your paper thin womb--
Bright'ning to hues of yellow-gold and roan.
By midday you're a plastered mass of veins
Now melting white against a sky who screams
Hot bullets right into your shadowy seams,
And leaves a shriveled root writhing for rain.

Approaching thunder quivers leafless boughs
That cackle a windsong with brittle bows
Enticing damp mists as the twilight shadow grows . . .
Warm drizzle soaks your gleaming torse black
To acquiescence, longing dawn's brilliant break
To beckon an albino virgin back.

Cleveland

A gray sky can't envelope a 
City grayer, colder still,
Or melt molasses mornings
As dawn watches mute from behind the water.

A granite fog won't coax us, "hurry!"
Follow rotted floorboards out
To the blackened asphalt, grounded riches
That keep us from sinking into W 54th.

Feel highway maples fade away
In summer haze,
While drywall houses
Parade atop cornfield graveyards,

And dreams
Slither through a whitewashed city
On a quiet, waveless bank.

© All Copyright, 2000, Katya Itomlenskis .
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.