Regina Green

Shelley Lane, The Child Poet

in new york city

kiss me
like a cab driver
all fury and fumes
consider the meter
its hard click
we’ve crossed into another
borough all heart-stopped
and forgotten our luggage too

i am spilled this day

I am spilled this day
a large portion of my rib cage
cradles an involuntary nest of cats

a trapped thighbone
becomes a baton passed
from mouth to mouth
the race already lost

body fluids flood the earth
the hollowness of a once weighty skull
belies the truth that a mind
is an infinite thing to waste

kick at the remnants of me
I would shatter piece by piece
and disappear with the web of detritus
taken by a frosty fanfare
of the coldest kind

it seems too late now
too late to do anything different
I feel so light
so unaware of the decay
that were you to push at me
with your finger
your hand would go straight through

beware of the girl with missing limbs
beware of blue eyes searching for them
her arms and legs folded like a prayer book
hidden beneath a canticle of collapse

jesus and the poet

jesus and the poet sat down together
one morning and the poet shared
how she wanted to start a church just for poets

how there would be black moleskins in the pews
and pens in the collection baskets and the high priest poet
would give them all a blessing from shakespeare or
akhmatova or oliver and with a final flourish

the air would be electric with the buzz of inspiration
muses would come forth from holy water fonts
poets writing the perfect line would be slain by the blood
of whitman right in their chairs and others would rush
to read and clap and be renewed in their faith

that writing poetry truly was a spiritual toil
and one might feel as low as low can get
but in a single stroke the dead would come to life
and all would cry

hallelujah hallelujah

and jesus called it the church of the suffering poor poet
for lack of anything better he said
but she knew he was right of course he was right
the beholder of all things immortal
who never held a pen in his life but with words
and desperate love wrote of many things seen and unseen

the church is open every day rain or shine
but especially on days of rain
there is no commitment
only that you fall in love at least once while reading neruda
to a stranger on a park bench

schoolgirl

there is nothing more wonderful
than watching you
all long-legged and perturbed
your arms a whirling windmill
gusts of low-brow conversation whipping
us all into a frenzy
you take a gentle sip and then a gulp
and all the redness leaves your face
it’s go time
you make your way past the naysayers
and stand on the table rejoicing
the last time anyone’s ever seen
something like this in this long-necked
town was when your mother graduated
from high school
the diploma a folded-up dove
released amid a barrage of wailing
don’t go
don’t go
but she did
and now here you are
a past life come to terms
with the going but never arriving
there is the sound of clapping
somewhere like a train off in the distance
the next town harboring a secret
the whispers louder now
you come down
finally a hip girl
tragic but hip
a thin thread winds your wrist
and slipping out of your make-shift
tenure of forever child
you want to scream

and you do

grace eleanora

grace eleanora
my grandmother of non-memory
a searing breast and you are gone
barely here

your absence feels like the edge of a knife

your tenuous connection to my mother
a campaign of secrets
she did not say good-bye to you then
and all these years she has never stopped

perhaps I look like you
the same milky blue eyes
or you might have given me a ring
from a delicate finger
shared some secret held in the palm of your heart

I would have taken anything

Regina Green’s poems have appeared in The Human Genre Project, A Little Poetry/Voracious Verses, Cahoots Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Physiognomy in Letters and the on-line poetry blogs Bolts of Silk, This Zine Will Save Your Life, Thirteen Myna Birds and A Handful of Stones. She is also published in Spiraling Volume 1 and Spiraling Nature, two collaborative Lulu pressed poetry compilations. Regina is a therapist living in Marietta, GA and is celebrating her first real Fall and Winter since moving after twenty years in south Florida. Some of her favorite poets include Martin Espada, Anne Sexton, Saul Williams, Jane Kenyon and oh, so many others. Poetry is the blossom on her stem. You can find her at Red Bird Chronicles.