Andrea Lodge

Poetry

 

 

The Challenge

 

She says my fingertips are The Devil’s teeth

and skips away into the bushes 

that always laugh along with her.

The ones that told her once 

that love hasn’t been born yet.

 

I have watched her melt into sunsets.

But she hides her pulse in a waterfall

in a canyon

made of the crayons cooking on the tin lid

of childhood lost,

all for the sake of a rainbow.

 

Her enormous giggle storms the constellations

and I wind up dangling from Cassiopeia.

Her eyes widen at the sight of me,

silly and being illuminated by the lightning bolts

in the sharp-edged abyss spiraling between her breasts.

 

She tells me I am the light bringer 

but she knows nothing but darkness.

She says she might be okay with the son of Aurora,

if I keep those fingertips deep in my pockets.

She’ll permit me to be a blast in her cosmic skeleton,

and she’d die for me to rule her underworld.

 

 

 

Brain Shits

 

My ex-boyfriend didn’t like the song ‘Whole Lotta Love’ by Led Zeppelin.  Wait.  He loved Zeppelin.  I think he actually loved the song as well.  But when I started singing it one day?  When I got to the parts about how way down inside, he was gonna give her his love, the parts where he was gonna give her every inch of his love, nope.  That was the end of that song for my voice.  Why?  Because I was obviously singing it in reference to the size of his cock.  His itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny cock.  Mocking him.  Obviously, the song, the one released eleven years before he was born, was written to poke fun at his small dick.  So that in thirty years, some girl in a dirty bedroom, once white, now stained with nicotine and permeated with melancholy, soaked with the stench of stale beer and sticky with sloppy-drunk-dropped shots of Jack Daniels, could sing along, to the album that he was blasting on his stereo, to make fun of the boy she loved’s penis.  She wasn’t doing that.  I.  I wasn’t doing that.  But I secretly thought it was funny.  I didn’t laugh out loud.  I got hit anyway.  But I was still laughing inside.  I don’t recall the impact of the hits.  One of the reasons I’m able to tell these stories.  I don’t think they ever happened to me.  That was a me from another dimension.  Me in another lifetime.  I’ve lived so many, after all.

 

Chuck.  Let’s be specific though, because it’s not the bad Chuck.  Not Charlie with the hernia whose mom told him to break up with me because I was using him for sex.  Please read that sentence again.  Note that I was also fifteen years old.  Charlie, whose mom slept with her eyes open.  Yeah.  Okay.  And not Charles, sweet, enormous Charles whose dad knew my dad and then knew me and was just, well, nah.  No, this is Chuck Steuder.  Kind of enormous.  I guess his size suited him because he looked like a brute and that part was cool.  He was older than I was so that was exciting then.  It wouldn’t be now.  I mean, girls like boys who are older and then they don’t.  Maybe not all girls, but before I started dating my husband who was eighteen when I was twenty-three, I was seeing a seventeen-year-old.  Yes.  You are correct.  That is illegal.  So?  Chuck Steuder who I think wanted to like, carry me around.  Throw me over his shoulder like an ogre, like “This bitch mine!”  Then, he opened his mouth.  And a voice higher than mine came out.  To me, I sound like a man.  When I hear myself the way others hear me, I sound like goddamn Chyna (for those of you old enough to remember the good old days of wrestling) or a man trying to be a woman or the other way around.  It’s a raspy voice (from smoking) and a bit too youngish sounding for someone close to forty.  I wasn’t close to forty then, remember?  I was about sixteen?  The years are smeared together during that time.  The only point I wanted to make was that I couldn’t do it.  He wasn’t very handsome, but good enough looking to go on a few dates with, though no one from my generation or any after really ‘dates’ anymore.  But dude.  An ogre with a voice like that.  Oh!  And the things he talked about.  How could I forget?  He cried.  Talked like a woman and cried.  At like 6’7” and 300 pounds. 

 

I was a mean and nasty bitch most of my life and never knew it.  Is that weird?  I mean, I’m like nice.  I think I am.  I go out of my way to do things for the people I love and try to show people I love that I appreciate them and all that stuff.  Nice girl things.  But apparently, and I’m not going to fight it anymore, I was a cunt.  Still am.  My BFF from age 5 until she faded away, still talks to me and always tells me how awful I was at being a friend.  I always leave our conversations thinking about that.  Why does she only remember the bad things from a thirty-year friendship?  No, it’s not nice to tell your flat-chested friend to stuff her bra for the church dance, no one will notice, and then tell everybody, “Hey, Kristy stuffed her bra,” when you walk in.  That’s not very nice.  And, I suppose nice girls don’t pull titties out in front of their friend’s fiancés either.  Or so she says I did something like that.  But I don’t think I did that.  That wasn’t me.  That was me from another dimension.  Me in another lifetime.  I’ve lived so many, after all.

 

 

 

Moldy

 

Look at the silly girl,

Pliable as putty

Copying comics 

Dirtying herself up

To allow laziness in

With Garfield.

 

And I am blotting paper bleeding.

I am the wash.

The faint practice over the pencil.

And dirty laundry.

 

Watch that out for the goofy girl,

Cross-hatched in latex,

Causing accidents and having them.

The landscape of her face,

Now and always a glaze

Wet on wet, but with age breaks.

 

And I am shellac, sticky.

Lovechild of matchstick and balsa wood.

Oil pastels unblended with lacquer thinner.

Anhydrous and crackly across my eyes.

 

If you see the tired girl,

Flattened cardboard, but corrugated,

Thick like gesso, simultaneously deflated,

No resuscitation is needed,

Just take heed of her mouthless patina.

But sketch her in charcoal as you walk away.

 

And I’ll be perfectly clipped and chipped paper ships,

Delicately imprisoned underneath clear acrylic,

A decoupage table-top of memories,

Some you and I and all, scissored up and forgot.

 

Take time to engage to anxious girl,

With the fingerprints drying in her Claymation.

Plasticine fun factories always hold crunchy pieces,

That children forgot to eat,

And you know that these unsticky thicknesses,

Hold onto imprints for so long and take them deep.

 

And I’ll keep my skin colored primer,

But respect the mural of my life,

Tiles in this mosaic weren’t manufactured for the people,

Each of mine, I shattered with my own teeth.

 

Care carefully for the girl with the rubber pole,

She can barely balance her body’s refraction.

Made of brushes too hydrated in watercolor,

Still too thinly masked for gouache.

She wants to heat to stay at medium,

Keep an eye on her tint, and she’ll take care of the toner.

 

And I’ll be tinker toys, fitting loosely.

Sticks and holey circles, sometimes I’ll be tight.

There are no blank canvasses anymore,

Just fugitive colors, 

Without bending light.

 

 

 

Sometimes I Exist

 

You’ll find me under

a rusty old nail.

Cherry stain on

a porch swing

no one wanted to keep.

 

Fingerprints in 

Play-doh creatures,

dried up on the radiator.

 

I was once a mud pie.

Remember me in a tin.

On top of cinder block walls

in the gentle shade

of the purple blossoms

of our rose of Sharon

that fall into 

the turtle’s home.

He tries to eat them,

but still prefers

Japanese beetles.

His shell isn’t in his grave.

 

I’ll be somewhere captive

in a red Walkman, 

But not a Walkman,

because I am not 

name brand.

With a Paula Abdul 

cassette inside.

Rush, rush

Find me.

 

You know I swell

beside disco ball-illuminated

gloves without fingers and

Church-basement

orange juice in a bowl

with a spoon.

Another place.

Another time.

Lies about names,

and dancing.

I dance through you.

 

Sometimes,

but only here and there,

I can growl like a hardcore song.

Others, I’m a dog whistle.

I push vibrations

through what’s left of my teeth,

breathe in cancer,

and wheeze out something

resembling what should be.

 

I bathe myself

in tubs of grit.

Emerge something cleanly,

but never clean.

I’m often unseen.

 

Think maybe I’ll travel back there,

back where

nothing was and no one knew.

Not me, not all of you.

Before I could tell,

my leaves were flaking,

my branches were breaking,

and my roots were seething 

with poison.

 

No choosing here.

Not sure about

winning or losing here.

Fruit bruising here,

falling from the trees.

Me.

 

Lose me in a torn-up knot of hair,

but find me under scars,

you’d never know to look there,

or think I’d possess

a basket of unnamed stars.

 

Doing tumble salts around

the bottom of the

bottom grape.

The fruit that bursts

or shrivels up,

guess we’ll see,

just how much 

I can take.

 

 

 

Stray Cats

 

Purple nails

Geometric

We need soil

Crispy eyes

Too many gunshots

Distressed watering can

Helpless seeds

Helpless me

And there’ll be pinkish

And wrought iron numbers

On the old-school

Pots that block car doors

And the inability to cope

Chicken wire cylinders

Things that resemble salad

A car crash

The end of days

Like punch out

Like fruit punch

Like puncturing skin

Thin

Paint thinner dreams

Old pine green boots on a table

Leaky toilets

From too much sleep

Plastic unnecessary geese

Gaudy

Missionary cats

Paint-by-number markers

Juicy bugs in dampness

There will be green

Can’t escape color

And vaccinations

Floating spots across eyes

Fucking cancer

Motherless children

Too many games

Unused hobbies

That’s one way you’ll know

Skulls with deadly roses 

Puffed up feet

And ants

Ants on your arms

 

 

 

Andrea Lodge resides in Philadelphia with her husband and two disabled cats; Budgie, with only three legs, no tail, and who constantly drools, and Loki, AKA Poki, AKA, Pokapotamus (because he weighs 20 pounds), a Scottish fold with only one folded ear.  She studied English/Secondary Education at Holy Family University and taught middle and high school Writing and Literature after graduating.  She is now a full-time writer and is the administrator of a Facebook writing group focusing on critique for writers of poetry and prose.  She has had three poems recently featured on Spillwords, a poem and story published in an anthology released by Havik, five poems in the Feminist Agenda issue of Alien Buddha Press’s recently released book, her poem Screaming at Tiffany’s was in the 12th issue of Voice of Eve magazine, and her artwork will soon be featured in the online literary journal, Obra.