Poet: Maggie Foree, Portland, OR
Smalldoggies Poetry Feature #22: Maggie Foree, Portland, OR
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Hooked Girl
I.
I entered a spotty camera hallway where rain
was a surname spun up.
The windows curved
and shuttered. The floor broke into circles: they danced
and one up rose and carved my leg
into a music box: sang
hooked girl.
II.
It was a place for things, for things to live. It shuddered and
rolled and climbed into walls and
vines and plates and string. Pressed things living. Breathing small
amounts. Her hair was brown but gray but this
is fiction. It was a house. A house of things in the middle
of things tracked roof red sameness. I believe it swallows. The wasps
came back and metal frogs.
III.
Streets opened up wide like driving
on tongues. Cousin girl punched me face square said ain’t you
a cowgirl or what? Walked a pig down
the canal. 10 miles to Algodones and Mexico screams
cul-de-sac jack rabbit 80 miles per hour. Aunt Esther says
no Tia, cactus saguaro jitters. Walked
a wash and pulled up
a red ant palace coat. Purple mountains
buttered my eyelids.
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Less (2+5)
[Cold Broke in Like the Fat Orange Cat]
Sometimes in that corner
it wrapped voices. into ugly
ribbon machine. Up shut myself right
into Winter. Scratch
my whispers slowly into wine
glass balloons thin. What it is exactly about this place don’t
I don’t know. Her voice
was high but rumbly but sheer. Completely opaque
woods like. It tickled my back. And that’s when the bridge jumped off
the airplane and ceased to fly. One
of those days when it rose
up and stared me down with
screaming elbows and thick jowls. Take me up
and sideways into town. Her name was never
Eloise.
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Wagon Home
Yesterday I watched
a hobo get locked up while
I drank a cinnamon-nutmeg
soy chai. Hot. He had a pretty
mouth. It curled and twisted
like earthworms eat soil.
Snuggled soft against
his teeth. He and his mouth
had a red wagon, engine fire
red, like I rode in
when a child: low with a long
black slippery neck. They filled
it up with treasure: fishing pole, cute
gray boot, newspaper (quality). They kissed
that wagon stiff, cried
into it. Stroked it
slow. I’ve never seen
a mouth feel heartbreak. His did.
Mouth right broke in half when
they nudged off his wagon, wrists welded
together, as he knelt
like he would before god. I think
that his mouth must have
looked pretty to god
that day too. Curling. Twisting.
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Lampshade
Lit black fish tanks flood over into
my head knob. Feels like she right grabbed and twisted it full
360 into half moon fluorescent brain
vein love. What is it about
this clock bullseye that always gets
us going? You know when winter is coming and the sidewalk
gets crisp and slick up like a young kid spitting
loogies out over a wash.
It’s a quiet sort of thing.
Glass green lamps hum in corners, gnawing
straight into. It always happens just after
the tomato plants die. Stringy like seaweed reaching down low
to find fall underneath
the rot wood planter.
I’ve never owned a lampshade with.
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Stay Lost Years
I.
We always run the garden hose like this, when Mom
is not home and the eggplants
are always ripe. Mulberry tree swing sets throw
her hair into a curtain globe; circles expand
inward, arms swell steel
string lengths. We dance circles
on the stomach.
II.
Mr. G’s is full up again. Handle bar skates rusty tortilla
best beans in town. I always forget if I
am 3 or 33. Cars turn into
horses into dogs into paper. Put a song
into my ears and tell me
it is Winter.
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Maggie Foree graduated University of Arizona with a poetry emphasis. Her work has appeared in Housefire. She lives and writes in Portland, OR.