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PUBLISHED WORK
A Cottage Named Rest and Be Thankful
It was shots across the lake at dawn
it was deer season’s opening day
it was cold it was windy it was dreary
it was Thanksgiving nothing moved
except hunters and their prey
it was quiet it was ritual it was family
it was gratitude it could have been bliss
all the leaves wedged into the table
it was marks left in oak from scores
was teen girls it was makeup
it kept for word games for dice games
slight numbers revealed by polish
it was flowers it was candles
it was family it was ours it was basting
a white pop-out thermometer holding
firm it was bird always almost done
it was shadow it was gloss it was mini
skirts a walk in the park before dinner
finally it was time it was platter
it was savory it was steam it was carving
it was breast it was thigh it was dressing
it was mashed potatoes getting cold
on my mother’s plate she was eight
sitting for hours over potatoes
she had slathered with mustard
not excused from the table her lesson
the walls her parents scrubbed
for Depression potatoes it was time
to gather without question but should
we wait for the girls it was slate gray
sky quickly darkening it was roaming
the neighborhood in cars the park dark
it was doe a deer a female deer
it was guns it was rape it was murder
it was mayhem until we stopped the cars
more or less all in agreement the girls
would return when they got cold
enough where else would they go
and later they did
from his point of view also
a suspect but absent a body
did she leave on her own
or is the girlwife framing him
with he said she said is either one
telling the truth if there is a truth
or what about the next story
also a girl witnessing a murder
from the window of a train begging
the question when breath ceases
does the story matter if it is not
murder is there a story to be untold
was the bedroom window
left open that night or locked
who tossed the single white rose
into the river was it a signature
or the return of magic realism
the return of alternate universes
Click below for the video reading
Curtains Blowing in the Wind
You and I love have written fiction
together it can be an intimate act
where we said writing in and out
of each other elicited the yin yang
of voices the he said she said
but in the year of the unreliable
narrator the question is who
is telling the truth if there is truth
haven’t we known all along writers
are unreliable narrators and not all
skeletons are the ones in the closet
like the trendy gone girl
gone missing the story first told
by the adulterous husband
from his point of view also
a suspect but absent a body
did she leave on her own
or is the girlwife framing him
with he said she said is either one
telling the truth if there is a truth
or what about the next story
also a girl witnessing a murder
from the window of a train begging
the question when breath ceases
does the story matter if it is not
murder is there a story to be untold
was the bedroom window
left open that night or locked
who tossed the single white rose
into the river was it a signature
or the return of magic realism
the return of alternate universes
The Keening
As if someone had been lost
the sound mournful and low
from a human it seemed at first
though the source was unclear
​
several yards touching ours
turned up empty no moans
from injured individuals
so where was it coming from
​
downtown a railyard whistle
familiar and daily but not
so what a creature’s paw
caught in a trap or a tomcat
​
caterwauling not in daylight
a cote a bevy a dole a dule
a flight so many names
for a group of mourning doves
​
but none feeding on the ground
only a drab female cardinal
pecking around the hulls
of spent sunflower seeds
​
as the silence lengthened
I returned inside to the table
to pour over a box of half pastels
sixty colors Rembrandt’s
​
general selection for that day’s
lesson in abstraction earlier
Ed had finished his piece
so I was alone as the low wail
​
began again and I found
myself opening the back door
once more to stand still
and focus on a large dead bough
​
Loki
Others write about dead men walking
instead I am a walking flower, bright
turquoise white and yellow, edged
in black geometric-patterned silk, a button
on strands of colored thread hooked
around my throat. I am a flower walking
among roses and drought-loving vinca
small white fairy flowers, clematis
thickly covering a cement block wall.
I am turquoise against Russian blue sage
yellow against Klondike cosmos
thick-stemmed and covered with bees
in the gardens planted to replace lawn.
I am walking into the seven thirty dash
for work that follows the shortcut
up Woodcrest, a narrow road over Red
Mountain and down into Homewood.
I am backing the car out of the driveway
as pain shoots through my thigh,
the car still moving into a sharper acuity
of what is caught at the hem of my dress,
the kind of bee others all day will tell me
never stings, boring anyway into my thigh
a red welt forming under patterned silk
​
Fog
The interpreter of my dreams professes
his love for me with the last words from his lips
before the lights go out, then sleeps curled
around my back, one hand cupping a bare breast.
​
A Shakespeare scholar and devoted fan of Jung
professor emeritus of literature popular culture
and horror a reader of a dozen books at once
a writer with dialogue going on in his head
​
most of the time, he listens with morning patience
to my ramblings about disjointed dreamscapes
and tells me all who roam there are my own personae:
the one chasing me and the one I am chasing
​
in the shadow of the moon the moon itself
and all of the others just below the water's surface.
I absorb what he says and nod and go on
as if it's enough to have said the dream aloud,
​
until near fatal clots travel to his lungs and fog
descends to obliterate the entire dreamscape.
The next morning my throat closes around
a hollowness that takes my breath away.
Name Your Poison
​
In her hand my neighbor held out a box
offering me nerium oleander a poison
as toxic as the fairy tale’s shiny apple
in a kit of age-defying seductions
but what she didn’t know is I know
oleander aka rosebay the bejeweled
pink or white clustered blossoms lining
my mother’s sea-sprayed Carolina yard
with subtropical fragrance the leaves
narrow and willow-like linear lanceolate
oleander the most poisonous of garden
plants in zones 8-10 along the coast
even deer know poison when they find it
planted in a ring around the roses
to be fair I don’t think my neighbor meant
to poison me since she used the product
herself and it’s not the first poison sold
as potion this one a cardiac glycoside
acting on the contractile force of the muscle
of the heart disrupting its function as if any
of us could know exactly how the heart
functions with so many emotions
streaming through its arteries/veins
​
The main artery in this midwestern town
a mythical Main Street with some storefronts
empty Radio Shack closed also The Times
an old movie theater and up the road
deserted factories never enough jobs
so selling nerium oleander becomes one
in a rat-a-tat tat announcement of a get rich
quick scheme for the price of a sales pitch
oleander with the sound of a round O
this is the way a pyramid is formed
by women you know a cousin a friend
a woman at work selling baskets or makeup
or storage containers that burp this time
the reward a Lexus instead of a pink Cadillac
the real money going to the usual suspects
which among them is not an old white man
while in the news on Sunday my neighbor
​
fainted several times also in the ambulance
as her heart rate slowed to 40 beats a minute
while we who want to understand googled
to find oleander can kill but also redemption
for oleander as the official flower of Hiroshima
having been the first to bloom following
the atomic bombing of the city
​
Strange Angels
American Horror Story haunted an old
house a gorgeous Tudor with Tiffany
fixtures transforming light
into ordinary horror not so terrifying
until the second season when the Story
took up residence in an asylum
also not so frightening for most
no more than a haunted house
but it was the asylum of my nightmare
where three strange angels knock
on the door while D.H. Lawrence
shakes his fist at me and shouts
admit them admit them and when I do
open the door I find Norma splintered
in a Picasso portrait with her blond son
Norman the father of my children
holding the hand of the third angel
an anonymous towheaded baby girl
wandering off into a clouded dream
without an answer to these questions
1) is it true that angels represent
what has been lost and
2) what am I to do with these three
barefoot angels that elicit body memories
of pregnancy the little souls moving
around in my belly four times
creating in me a certain vulnerability
all hormones and love we were young
then twenty somethings seeking romance
and orgasms playing house and haunted
by Norma who had never agreed
to give up either of her sons to marriage
meanwhile with each birth my focus
turned more inward first in utero
then towards the small warm beings
it was during those baby years
when the last two girls where born
a year apart that I lost track of myself
and world events as they unfolded
a peanut farmer president hostages
taken I think I forgot to vote
the year an actor was elected then later
the Iran contra affair and other whole
blocks of news I never followed
or music that changed with the body
politic all a blur until the marriage
finally shattered after Norma decided
to reclaim her sons and send me
to an asylum transference a doctor
would later explain she the strange angel
who would take care of everything
and even when I heard it as crazy talk
I could feel the sensation of walls
closing in of doors slammed shut
gauzy claustrophobia wrapped around
me in Central State Hospital the place
where my own depressed mother
had volunteered as a Gold Lady
and though that asylum was closed
years ago claustrophobia still
finds its way back to me in dream
Her Body is Small in the Box
On a ship anchored off Tortola the island
named for turtle doves I watched tenders
in the distance transport tourists back and forth
while I stayed with Mr. Fox: A Novel that twisted
and turned in on itself a metafictional plot
of murder and mayhem when the father
who murdered the mother was viewed
by his daughter as small in his coffin
this muse brought back to me my own mother
dead these few months not murdered
unless I did kill her by insisting on morphine
for the intensity of her pain
either way at the end her body was delivered
before dawn one Sunday in June to a deep South
funeral home tastefully set back in time
where cremations were complicated
by the need for signatures from every sibling
as a defense against drama our own family
unpredictable in that way since years before
one sister had hijacked the burial of our brother
the one closest to our mother and the only boy
so we didn’t seem to mind that he was her favorite
until he broke her heart the year she said
he drank himself to death
​
when we discovered we could bury her body
without all siblings signing since a body
could always be exhumed to settle a fight
discussions turned to a sea island cemetery
three states away Spanish moss palmettos
azaleas and a thousand brown live oak leaves
behind a three hundred year old church
the double headstone already engraved
with her name but not the year of her death
and after a couple of gin and tonics
the good sister thought we could kill two
birds with one stone like the aphorisms
so common among our mother’s people
we could bury her in the mink stroller
her name embroidered in the lining
of the coat she waited so long to own
but none of us now could imagine wearing
until that night I reread her will
with her request to be cremated
and I felt her claustrophobia punch right
through the lid of any satin-lined coffin
we could choose so it came down to the third
girl a notarized signature I finally asked
for and she did offer more out of the shock
of the death itself coming within a day
​
in what as children we thought was meant
by the quick and the dead in the creed
that told us what to believe in
but leaving only my identification
of her body to the mortician he said
he had prepared her in a cardboard
box for cremation and as if she had shrunk
that last day ever she was small in the box
The Story of Life
We could feel the evening falling around us
though it was noon when clouds covered the sun
above the chapel lit only by natural light
filtering through the windows
and upwards from the window wells
the guidebook said low light lent an ancient
and melancholy air to the fresco we had come
to Italy to see God the father creating Adam
their fingers almost touching except for a small
space left between the two in anticipation
of that moment when God would complete
his creation but in the dull light the fresco
distant and blurred by macular degeneration
and glaucoma for Ed who decided to ask
the guards what time they would turn on
the lights after all in the story of life God
had risen into the sky with arms outstretched
to separate light from darkness evening
and then morning of the first day but that day
Ed was one of those the official husher tried
every few minutes to quiet the crowd forever
changing but always always looking up and sighing
LINDA CASEBEER
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