Softsoap Fiction

It doesn’t have to be something of
	crushing importance
	but it certainly can be,
says my writing teacher
	and I am reassured as I sit on this
	cracked faux-leather seat.

I listen to your unremarkable metaphors
	resist ripping my ears out
	to reject shadowy pill-induced nightmares

the high school anxiety
	that metamorphosed
	into bad poetry.

I don’t want to hear about crushes
	on Maybelline girls
	teetering from fuchsia heels that could kill
	and have
stomped
	ground your heart into pools of

dry organic decaf low-fat sugar-free white chocolate cappuccinos
	with extra whipped cream.

There were those days you pulled fire alarms because
	you get a strange neurotic thrill
	from seeing seventeen hundred teenagers
      grumbling
		       gossiping
			              and laughing
	out on that green field.

You always thought ice-cream tasted
		  best
during December
	when sweeps of snow
	would fly rampant
	like frosted flakes
		(they’re great!)
        falling from the closed fists of your baby sister.

The rage that would boil and hum in your blood
	when an entry-level employee in a service sector profession
	would tell you to have a nice/good/wonderful day.

Then you tell me
	about every time you decided
	you wouldn’t cross the street anymore
	making up your mind that you’d finally go down the road
	only to get	lost
		    in the back alleys.

I can’t look into your
	sickening eyes
	the shade of what blue lightning must be
	when it recedes into black night

so I start smoothing out this piece of tin foil
	from one of those cheap chocolate eggs you’d find
	guarded by a lonely gnome
	because your grandmother’s daffodils still hadn’t bloomed
	when the annual hunt came around again.

We’re listening to some old indie mash-up hit
	made of whoops and trendy guitars

and just to make sure I’m still here
	you’re reaching across the crumbling plastic table
but	I get 		a knee jerk reflex type of feeling
	so my foot connects with your shin.

In a slick mom-and-pop’s diner
you’re telling me all these things
	and I forget to remember to forget
	if this is genuine or
some old elementary school tactic
	for bullying? for crushing?
	for what?

There is some rustling though
	because you’re going out for a cigarette
even if you don’t say anything at this point
	I know I can’t follow

and I can only wonder why you need the smoke.

So that was my poem, I hope you enjoyed it. I’m messing around with WordPress now as a temporary home for my poems and other writing. Although longer works…would be more difficult to post here unless…Oh! I can get some free webspace and post my longer works and link them from here.

© Caroline Cheng, 2008

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~ by aubergineconfetti on April 21, 2008.