ANXIETY OF GUILT


There never was a time when guilt
didn’t sit just below my clavicle.
If genetic guilt is possible, I know
how it travels packaged in the lining
of the uterus where it feeds on my soul
just as pregnancy ate the calcium from
my bones and teeth,
yet births continued, through ignorance
and the too infrequent pleasure of sex,
but like a drug addict’s call, the beckon
of climax too great to ignore.
I know it’s contagious
and always there, hardly buried
in the day-to-day issues of life
where it arises on a perfect day
to swamp pleasure with anxiety.
I can see the veins on the top of my
hands that used to be smooth, a cliché
reminiscence of mother’s hands.
the skin so thin, a tap leaves a reddened
rose of remembrance, like guilt,
it fades slowly.

NAME UNSPOKEN


His name lies on our tongues
never voiced
a memory that wanders through us
dragging its pain like shredded flesh,
bloodied and defiled.
We talk around him when we talk at all
as if his being doesn’t sit with us still,
as if his mind wasn’t beyond his learning.
his guitar playing so natural
all who heard were amazed.
As if the adoration of his dog,
big and clumsy and mourning
at the top of the stairs
didn’t tell us what we already knew.
We never talk about the night;
the police refusing entrance
his body hanging stilled
as if our imaginations didn’t speed past
the reality of the horror, the loss, the emptiness,
the gut-wrenching explosion of pain upon hearing
he was no more.

---

Pat Tyrer is a writer and lover of literature who walks the canyons of West Texas watching birds when the sun is up and star gazing when it’s not. She loves poetry that sits in your mouth and fiction that speaks in mysterious and haunting ways. See more of her work at www.wordstreet.net

---

While you’re here, you might want to check the submissions guidelines and our new experiment: Rural Fiction Magazine.