Brackish Street

by Rachel Lauren
             
Telephone wires cast its web to all the hungry houses. Connecting us. I know them not by name but the way they live. There’s the blue balloon always been filled with helium two houses to the left. He occasionally passes a nod to the walking wallet tip toeing on debt. Who sleeps with the gold mine at one of his other houses so the damp rag he married can absorb more fallen tears, the two houses across the street. A lonely house falling apart from heartache rots in its grave to the right. I sometimes lurk along its walls following flies. They tell me secrets. “He chops off the heads of crows and harvests them for the winter to wear them on the tips of his fingers.” Who are these people that share the same brackish street name as me? Trapped in this web.

Baked Scraps

by Rachel Lauren

He always yells at me
from his office room
telling me to keep it down
he wore pajamas to work
but if you asked me his uniform
was an orange jumpsuit
and his holding cell was typed
words on a page turned vertical

He birthed these words from his mind
to the page but
I was birthed by mother
so I came second to love
hours withered like flower petals
after the stem is choked
by metal claws
when the little lights of hope
that grows in number each year
for my birthday emerged
from mother’s hand
his hands were stabbing away
at the fading keys
my wish was a twin
to the year before
but the little lights of hope
always vanished

Piano residuals unattended
bleacher seats vacate
report cards unnoticed
he probably wouldn’t
even recognize the stranger
his only daughter had involved into
he probably thought I was still four
with pigtails and crooked teeth
I was the cub of an alpha lion
who cared less
if I was here or not
like baked scraps of DNA