April Michelle Bratten: Asleep On Magazine Street, Like A Diamond In The Light, Oh, North Dakota
Asleep on Magazine Street
I slept hotly,
burning on the hind legs of Magazine Street.
The heat rioted my insides,
moving me like a frazzled worm on the concrete.
I made that road my bed,
sprawled out like a white fan,
shameless,
waiting for the slow cook of summer.
I cut the flowers away from their humid homes,
and drizzled them over my chest like oils,
and while I slept,
I turned red and hard.
I awoke to find a caught dust in my palm,
it made an X on my skin,
tinted orange, the ends pink,
I thought I had been killed.
There was no wind, no sound,
only the moan of the rusted stairwells,
and I grieved with them,
as all the footsteps fell away,
and spring died in New Orleans.
Like a Diamond in the Light
I have devoured all endings
and soaked the fur
until it grew soft and clean.
I have kept my charms in a bucket
slopping them around
like a muddied water.
I let the dirt make little cakes
and pack into all of my rounded compartments,
but I am still here,
licking up the sick like a wounded dog.
I have gone mad
making half-moons
in the grass with my big angry lobster hands,
but those holes only refilled,
bones stacking
like terrible cages
inside the strong root.
And from this deep pit
I saw a swinging girl
with no smile,
but feet that arched like mushrooms.
On each upswing
she studied her pointed white toes
on the end of the sky.
I loved her,
knew her sour tastes,
and the oils that leaked from her back
like worms,
but her gentle ugly came
and smacked to grass,
as she removed one foolish rock
from her pocket.
She doesn’t swing anymore,
but I can still see her young ponytail
trotting away,
her back wet,
glinting like a diamond in the light.
Oh, North Dakota
North Dakota wraps around a body
like a fickle lover.
She will memorize the lines of your hands,
breathe the soft from your neck,
and then steal your mind.
She will make you believe that she would die for you,
but she knows,
she knows what she is doing.
Her trains are rushed through the black of the city,
her winter beams like a howl that bares itself at midnight.
Oh, North Dakota,
you are a woman who undresses herself for the man,
quietly, carefully,
on the tail of an angry wind.
North Dakota, you have forsaken me,
you know the nakedness of my new body,
the timidity of my bare finger
that stretches the air like a pale star.
Travelers do not know your cruel wind,
nor the tongue that flickers across your snow scarred streets.
They want to bare their feet,
invade the virginity of your new summer,
but you will grip,
you will strangle and thieve all of them,
from any human innocence.
April Michelle Bratten is a writer from North Dakota. She has been published in such places as Prick of the Spindle, BluePrintReview, Sein Und Werden, and Mirrors Magazine, among others. She co-edits the online literary journal Up the Staircase.
