Holly Day is our March Featured Poet
You can email Holly at: lalena@bitstream.net
IN MY HEAD
I know there’s something wrong with me
something inside me
something screaming to be let out
something talks to me in my sleep
something hurts me when I’m bad
something watches over me
like a Santa Claus
with claws
anchored in my heart
I can hear it talking to me
telling me what to do
and when I don’t
it digs
flexes its muscles
and pulls me down
oh god it hurts so bad
so I can’t say no
and if things don’t turn out
the way it wants
it blames me
CHICKEN WOMAN
chicken woman
dancing before the roaring hellfire
calling upon your power
for the power
chicken woman
they’ve shaped you since
you were a little girl
in braids and modest frocks
they taught you to dance naked
before the filthy men of the midnight gatherings
chicken woman
rubbing blood and mud all over your body
rolling your eyes wildly
and screaming in ecstasy
who would guess
that during the daytime
you’re just a simple
chicken woman
WHAT THE BIRDS FORGET, THE CRABS COLLECT
down by the beach, piece
by piece, the little bits
left on the sand, skin
and hair and teeth and nails
everything marked
by pincers and beaks
and it’s down to the water
we go, en masse, the bodies of bathers
asleep on the beach, too slow to wake up
to the shrieking of birds
gone mad in the sky
from the hunger and heat.
PREACHER
all alone with you in a black confession box
I sit and pour out my deepest
darkest secrets
to you
I don’t know about you
but this is really turning me on
I can smell you getting excited
a damp dark scent is leaking in from around the cracks
under the window
I can feel you throbbing
in the heat of your religious ecstasy
was it as good for you
as it was shameful for me
Holly Day is a journalism instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Bottle, The MacGuffin, and Not One of Us.