Claire T. Feild

The November Selected Poet is Claire T. Feild

Please feel free to email Claire at: ctillandsia@gmail.com

PILASTER

The pillar of the community feels pride
because of his unconventional
acceptance from a community
that overlooks his severe mental
problems.

His moodiness slashes him into two
individuals: one, a substance of
pictoric calm, the other hot-soapy
within fragmented ire.

Guilty of participating in a shivaree,
he is squandering through a
manic phase.

Sitting on his porch swing reading a
book, he is shopworn, crawling
through a depressive state.     

BLANKETED

Her personality overcast, she hears the
winds whistle spooky like, but
turns her body away from rain
mist, the kind that makes one
feel free to run through.

Since she combs her black hair most of
the day, she avoids the sun’s
rays that produce glints of
light on the trees’ leaves near
her dresser.

At night, she depreciates the lighting
bugs’ light by catching them in
a jar and then killing them by
stamping on them as if they
are nothing worth propagating.

After she dies, her overshadowed
mother has her body cremated
and then throws her ashes
into sludge.

Rolling her ashes into the mud, her
mother forms a mud pie
that she lets dry on her
kitchen sill.

The mother plays baseball with
her grandkids, using her
mud pie only once, its
particles flying freely in
all directions.

The grandkids laugh so loudly at
the ball’s quirks, the ebon
clouds send sheets of
rain to mildly split the
children’s fingers so that it
will be several days before
they play baseball comfortably
again.

BASAL

Fundamental to her nature is a dislike
for humankind: their positive
goals, their love for others, and
their ability to survive in ghastly
situations.

This witch takes great pleasure in tripping
others obsessed with their goals by
using her shoelaces as curvaceous as
fingernails never cut since birth. 

When she sees these individuals show
affection, she faints, her massive
dreams composed of slimy men
and women, meat-and-potatoes’
creatures searching for the nearest
lagoon, where they can get rid of
their foundational clothes.

After she awakens, she sees characters
almost reach the top of the mountain
where she lives in gruesome conditions.
She pushes the climbers over with a
rake’s stems.

She lives in constant fear that someone
will rip the colorful scarf off she
frequently ties to cover not only one
blind eye, but also the other eye
circular black from the presence
of persistent water contagion.

Claire T. Feild, nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Krater Quarterly, has had 355 poems and 5 creative nonfiction stories accepted for publication in 114 print journals and anthologies such as, The Tulane Review; Ghostlight: The Magazine of Horror; Folio;  Rockland Lit.;  Wordplay;  Spillway;  Poeming Pigeons;  The Carolina Quarterly;  Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley;  The Horror Zine;  Deranged;  The Path: A Literary Magazine;  The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal; and Literature Today (Volume 5). 

Her first poetry book is Mississippi Delta Women in Prism. Her five literary journals are in a series titled Beyond Doggerel: A Literary Journal for Teachers in Education. Her first chapbook is Southern Women: The 1950s. Her second chapbook is Indigo Blues (Origami Poetry Project). Her second book (creative nonfiction) is titled A Delta Vigil: Yazoo City, Mississippi, the 1950s. Her third chapbook, which is set in the Mississippi Delta, is titled Mississippi Delta Memories (creative nonfiction).