F.O.E.
The forces of evil—
the forces of evil are playing croquet
and eating bon-bons and you,
my friend, are far away.
The forces of evil are
poking me in the ribs and making me
drop things. They are making me
forget my lines and you, my friend—
how beautiful you were to my imagining.
The moon has slipped out of its ring,
got up to some mischief, I suppose.
The ducks are all in a row
quacking in terrible unison—
Come back! Come back!
The forces of evil have set them adrift there.
And you, my friend? And you?
You are a long time gone.
One day I shall rise up
against the wicket. But now
those forces of evil—oh they are
dazzling white, their white-picket grins
so suave none can resist them, and you,
my friend, were a fabulous idea that grew
feet and padded into an ordinary house.
Drop-Out
Confessions of a Fallen Tootsie Pop
It was early on I came here, not long
after unwrapping. There was the customary
brightening, the sharpened sound, and I
was plunged into the warm dark almost
silence, save for the odd gurgle or click
(you weren’t supposed to notice those,
but we’d all heard the stories, or if not
heard, then felt them). I remember
the knobbly weight rolling over
and over me, slicking away my edges,
taking off my outer elements easily:
meet-and-greet with saliva agents and
Whist! off they’d go down that fathomless
dark river—to where and to where
and to where? I don’t know. Pure energy,
I’ve heard, though that’s bit
hard to imagine. I came up—three?
four times?—into the noise light,
spit-shined glossier each time,
harder and brighter—that was the prize,
supposedly: to shine as the emblem of your own
yumminess. It was all right, but then
something slipped and I lurched into space—
cool, fast, end over end; it seemed forever
till I hit—something even harder than teeth
—and I knew right then, before I stopped
rolling and came to rest
on this grate, the bond was broken.
I’d have no more truck with any
pink mouth. That world was closed. I live
in the noise light now. Sometimes the grate
rumbles. The first time it happened
I was afraid, but as no crunch ensued,
and again no crunch, I came to enjoy
those deepity tremors and the great
shuffle and flurry of new motes
that comes after. I have been
consorting with all manner of particles.
Some of them cleave to my skin;
Some closer, insinuating. There is even
a kind of wet here, more subtle
than saliva. I should be sorry, maybe,
for not fulfilling the purpose my maker
intended, but I’m not. And anyway,
what good would that do? It’s begun.
The ambient salts have found me.
Already tingling, I begin to swell.
Prophecy
Crow and rabbit dead
beside a rushing stream.
I found them on the banks of Monocacy Creek
both complete, though
the rabbit’s head was severed,
the crow’s beak a black shiv between grass and wing.
The water was high and turbid,
in a terrible hurry.
The animals’ bodies marked a perpendicular line.
I’d been to the magic shop
after mugwort for dreaming
and here a dream fell ready-made at my feet,
the sort of sign I was learning
to look for: tell-tale
improbability that gives the lie to the dream,
dispels the glamour.
Lucid then, the dreamer
is free to shift shape and go where she will.
But this was not my dream;
these signs could speak
to any who chose to walk along the creek.
More like the dream
of the hero in a folktale,
who asks the wizard what it means
and thus learns his fate,
which he tries to avert
and in so doing rushes headlong into it
because no one can outrun
fate—not rabbit nor crow
nor walker in the wilderness of symbols.
Cleveland Wall is a poet, editor, and mail artist from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, land of crows and freight trains. She has performed her poetry at venues all over the Lehigh Valley and on both coasts. She makes tiny chapbooks and curates poetry events for the Allentown Arts Collective.
