I feel inspired from a book I read called Sunflower Country, by Dave Etter. It’s gives poetics to a small town in the MidWest of everyone that lives there. Each page is about a person in this village/town and some defining characteristic of them. It’s all fictional and I felt very moved by a great bit of it. I’m not sure where I’m going with this and I’m going to play with it…
Mary Jane Ellis
She has her secrets like you do.
Stories not to be shared, sealed, hidden.
Composed of wants, desires, failures
Missed steps of pain, betrayal, fractures
On the journey of a life that grabbed a gasp,
A whisper, a shuttering heave of despair.
And let that breath carve a slit, leave a small
Pocket of invisible in the mind far away from
The spill of it on to a life well lived.
She keeps her secrets even in the want
Of their dismiss and the weeping sore
Deep within that oozes up to her surfaces
Just below the what can be seen red hot
On her skin’s pulsing heart grieving..
Ready to be punctured in the pestilence
Of keeping caged that which gives
Agony to the train that expresses
through town with a wail and a no stop.
Of how secrets own her, hold her hard
To the rail track history that left a lie forsaken
Begging for redemption’s gentle forgiveness
She wants her secrets to remind her, carry her
Along in the mystery of having something
That’s only hers and no one else’s forever after
In the Keep that haunts her loneliness punishing.
Making sure that every day passes with a strike
Of a hush across her mind in the roar of the train
In the wail of her secret at 8:18 passing everyday
