Two Poems
by Kristen Wilson

Everything Goes On
             From: Everything Must Go by Joel Peckham

In the blue house, beside the flower field, at four
in the morning, a drunken mother throws fists
into walls of a 200 year old home made
for a family twice their size – as if they might
have intended on furthering their family or picked it
blindly, auctioned for a low price,
from the broken people who once lived beside the flower
field where they picked and pulled at peonies
on the colored flat, quiet as church

mice during the funerals. Nobody speaks
to her, holds her hand. Nothing
happy here. Nothing they have seen before
on every newspaper in town. Another stone is
placed. Another. And she breaks
down to her knees and doesn’t know
where to begin. That bastard, he killed our
only children, over crystal He’s
damn lucky he’s gone. I would’ve – And the pain that lingers in my hands
my knuckles explode in synchronized rhythm
for my own blood on Route 32. Everything slows.
Me, low on empathy, exhausted, empty out a loaded
gun. Everything stops. Unwilling. Un-
happy. Everything goes on. And a widow

sinks into a clay ground of spirits, except
she isn’t the kind to die disgracefully. Too
young, too bright, too emotionally sound. And too many people
sink into spiritually barren grounds, insanity and sanctity,
not a soul gets it or even tries to and said I misunderstood,
because they did. Most people. Even then, they don't

hear of these things: the way it happened
to them on purpose like predestined demise. How
dead are you now inside the barren ground? And, tell me, who
will care for your children playing up in the peonies now?

 

Teacup?

You fill me up,
with warmth and good feelings.
Then you empty me,
till there is nothing left.
You bathe me in steamy sauna,
then splash water in my face.
Then you leave me for a timeout, to let me blow off steam.

You come back to me, just to fill
me with ice.
I feel it in me and it consumes my being.
To feel something,
Just to be drained by you once more.
Just to be left to dry.
You throw an elbow in my face and knock me
off my pedestal,
and to the ground I fall.
And the worst of all?
All you ever did was use me,
for my tea.