Ryan J. Donaldson

So I wrote that poem I was talking about…

On The Fringes

On Tuesday, a man wearing camel hair
made plans with a woman bathed in shades.
Lunch, or breakfast on a Friday.
The first party slept until the afternoon
and the other died in a car crash
at 12:30.

Think not of missed connections.
There are smiling tamale ladies
selling their good in air conditioned doorways.

At night, when the street lamps
are the highest in the sky,
the roads miss the cars and
the traffic lights change out of habit.

The dark is interrupted by second job
taxi cab drivers shining their
searchlights at dilated pupils.
The drunks fall in disregarding
name tags proudly displayed on the dash.
Barks fly from the backseats conveying
slurred directions home.

On Monday morning,
the groundskeeper begins his day
with a cigarette,
spends the whole day picking up
butts and beer cans,
clocks out and smokes another cigarette.

Think not of mid-day deaths.
There are mothers and fathers
sisters, cousins, and brothers
ageing, aching, and dying
on the fringes.

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This is just the first draft…expect more soon.

I will write…

1. A poem about overly friendly tamale ladies.
2. A poem about second job taxi cab drivers and empty streets.
3. A poem about this creepy janitor who has been following me for two weeks now.

and it will be triumphant!

New Poems

There Are Three

My mind is sitting in the burnt-orange chair
across the room, pregnant with feathers,
smoking a cigarette.
We avoid eye contact.
Did you get off? I ask while staring
at the concaved space in the bed
she writhed and moaned from.
The answer I knew,
but it stuck
like peanut butter adhered to my
soft palette.

You obsessed, but I wonder:
Did you ever find your Greece?
Mythical island surrounded by
blue glass lined with white-washed
rooftops.
You found Aeneas in my loins
and ravaged my body while
my mind looked on and judged
our movements.
Your Demeter is still in the lawn
unmowed.
I drink to forget your curves.
My Iacchus floats
in my toilet bowl.

Bottles

In the wrinkles of your face
the future
you destroyed is visible.
But youth has not escaped you and never will.

How much money did you get
from recycling bottles?
I still remember the pale
green hue that rose
from their uncapped necks.
Sunlight shone through to your sill.
You told me you had to do it.

In between your thighs
I saw your whole world;
beauty and the images you
burned to forget your past.
We sat, over-looking the lights
of the city

while the cinders of cured
stop bath kept us warm.
I entered you.

Down below,
among the alleys, the wars of heaven
and hell unfolded. The gentlemen
clad in thrift store tuxedos took witness
until they grew tired
and took shelter in their refrigerator boxes.

I am no longer nestled
in your bossom. The desire
to rub your pocked cheek and
whisper in your ear
swells and boils over.
You didn’t have to destroy your body
to save your womb.
Tips of fingers running through your
soft curls and my hot breath
on your temple.
But there is no contact.

I’m beginning to figure out my house. The cool stuff. Like which knob to turn to make a certain burner come on, or the fact that my bread molds slower if I leave it in the glass cabinets instead of just on my counter. I no longer need to have any a/c because the building that I am in is insolated so well that it stays nice all the time, even when there is a window open on a cold night. These are the little simple things that make life a little more cozy.