Imperialistic Salvations

Lest the day leave its spindly fingers tethered
to the burrowing chill of bone,
we will forget that here the storm clouds gathered.

Our soul-vices may split and sever
the spine of devotion in a one night mantra
Lest the day leave its spindly fingers tethered.

Good women and men who leave will tempered
shall lose the memory of Siam’s great white elephant,
and forget that here too the storm clouds gaathered.

In time an arrow will light a tar-filled martyr.
Convicted he will writhe in wispy wisdom
Unless the day leaves its spindly fingers tethered.

Nation to nation we pitted pious passions,
ankles of devotion with raucous war.
Forgive us, for here the storm clouds gathered.

Oh, all the terrorist nations, imperialistic salvations,
are naught but lies to bind our ears and gibbously inhibit vision.
Lest, we let the day leave its spindly fingers tethered
and remember that once here the storm clouds gathered.

Sheep Guts

I listen with palpable want
As each new sinew of your story
Sings and sings through scotch-battered lips
And brings forth forms
Of riddling confession.

Saliva hangs on a beveled lip,
Glinting just enough to
Betray miniscule doubts.

I listen with all the intelligence
Whiskey can muster
As you bluff your way into my mouth,
Scatter fistfuls of teenage nightmares
Behind my teeth, and wait to see
If I can revel while I reckon.

Flippantly slamming our drunk
Into sheet-rock walls,
You pluck my sheep guts
While listening to the resonance
Of archaic scars—on that night we
Shut down a few bars
And laughed our way home.

Letter to Adam

Vicariously my hands—your hands—
Sift through our belongings,
As my perforated heart hunkers,
Awaiting its inevitable rending.

Regard our history of holes in the bedroom wall,
          That collection of recollections,
Congealed words
          Like the marks we make,
Those scribbled, circular impressions left
When we try to make a pen write again.

When we are gone
The landlord will paint over us.
We were just one clairvoyance
Kneaded by rhinestone promises,
And left undone.
Your hand brushes the lamb’s-wool sweater,
A gift shrunk by one warm washing,
One sleeve longer than the other,
The lissome fabric crisp, roughhewn.
His and hers are done—
Is every left gift so diminished,
So gnarled and misshapen?

Some men aren’t meant to hold their forms,
Or ever become clean.
And hence,
Join their brothers,
Becoming nothing
But tap-water words.

Kat Lavigne is a native South Carolinian and enjoys doing just about anything. Her favorite pastimes are playing good ol’ folk tunes on her guitar and trampin’ through the woods. This is her last quarter at Wenatchee Valley College—she is off to The Evergreen State College in the fall.

“We have to practice happiness; we have to practice humility.
We have to put some beauty back while we got the energy.”  —Ani Difranco