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"Wind", "Now You See It, Now You Don't" & "A Man Stops the Clocks" by Audrey Howitt



)))wind


unravels fingers—

tones pores which gasp as sudden cold


sneaks up on you like an icicle

down your back, between your breasts


stamps a crescent moon on your forehead

as wrinkles huddle in its gusts


skin dances, its electricity pungent

in the snap of so much air


fingers search for you

your furred belly


announcing its softness

into my waiting hands




Now You See It, Now You Don’t


There is a pool where everyone can drink,

liquid sliding down throats like cool tea

on a hot porch--

eyes glisten in half-light

as pinks and oranges give up the battle against darkening sky—


It can ease the whocha and whatcha of life—

at least for a while, but stay too long

and the pool shrouds you

in the woven hair of others

whose time has come and gone--

crumpled into dust on some bench

under stars that were once too hot.


We lie in the grass above—

the hills tendering their forgiveness

one star at a time as we lose our names

among falling petals—

pinks and purples clinging to their scent—

until the pressure of our hands releases it

and thirsty skin drinks.



A Man Stops The Clocks

 

My time at Barnhouse & Timble stopped

one afternoon when spring’s bright light

leapt off marble columns in a tilt-a-whirl ---


time fell away—

a crazy man with a gun, a judge, two attorneys,

and a soon-to-be ex-wife –the gunman looking to make her

an ex-wife, lickety-split—


Stood next to her, is all I did—

that and calling a spade a spade –

maybe he was drunk that day, but that

is granting an awful lot of benefit-of-the-doubt.


More likely, it was a grinding hate that unwinds clocks,

turns a man inside out.

Either way, a gun is a gun,

especially when loaded and handled

by a man wearing his innards as a suit.


The sun glinting off that gun pointed in my general direction—

the slowing tick of the clock, tears rolling down his face—

tears as he pulled the trigger—and the breath

that whooshed out so fast I didn’t feel it—not at first.


Watched red cover white marble, slowly pooling,

an ambulance on its way,

turning inside out right there on the floor.


They got divorced alright—later that year.

Same judge, but no more appearances from the husband.

They put a straitjacket on him to keep his innards contained.

He’s jacketed still.


On quiet days, I still hear that whoosh—

so loud, it drowns out everything else,

takes my pen away and stoppers up all the words inside—

just me and him, and his tears as I struggle for air.




Audrey Howitt lives and writes poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area.  When not writing, she sings classical music and teaches voice. She is a licensed attorney and psychotherapist. Ms. Howitt has been published in Purely Lit: Poetry Anthology, Washington Square Review, Panoply, Muddy River Poetry Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Total Eclipse Poetry and Prose, Chiaroscuro-Darkness and Light, dVerse Poets Anthology, With Painted Words, Algebra of Owls and Lost Towers Publications among others.


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