mary june brown

Rebels break rules and rules are there to provide order and armor against all manner of nameless, spooky dangers. Declaring mutiny on such things is risky, but the rebel’s blood races when caution signs bleed into yield signs and there is nothing quite like looking into the eyes of that kind of wildness.

Alas and alack. The universe conspires to keep the lion and the crab safe. Two weeks.

###

Endings still hurt, though she has had her fair share, and surely a thin layer of protective numbness should have moved in by now? This ending still hurt, a hard-packed snowball hitting a naked and bent spine. Was it the cold of it or the punch of it that caused her to shiver? Even the memory of warm whispers (a lyric, from a song, from a playlist, on a device) cannot combat the icy abrasions from these April storms.

Endings still hurt.
###

I don’t need your facebook to know you, and I don’t need to have seen your firm mouth, sunglasses, or broad shoulders to know they are there, somewhere far away, across oceans.

Listen, let me tell you a story. No, don’t sigh like that–I’ll make it quick, and I’ll not be melodramatic. See, there was an animal…pick any small animal…and this little animal was busy putting distractions in her own way. She questioned and needed, she foraged and gathered, and she hid and pondered. All kinds of crazy stuff. It was a crazy time and so she herself was a bit crazy. No, come on, let me finish. This isn’t about victimazation, ok? It’s about reality. So, anyway, she was content with things that, I promise you, you would not be content with. She was okay. She had a little life. This little animal was–what’s that? Oh, of course. Look, I was trying to make a point, but you are busy and can’t stoop to these esoteric ponderings anymore. Yeah, I know. I get it.

So, I’ll do away with hyperbole, with fables, etc., etc. ECT. ETC. Let me cut to the chase:
That animal, let’s call her a bird. She’s on the asphalt. A motorcycle or a rental car…something…it hit her and she succumbed very quickly. Always the lady bird, she’d not dream of rallying. She’s on the asphalt. Broken tenterhooks, matted and bloodied feathers. The End.

Quick enough?

###

DINNER IN AUTUMN
*This piece was purchased and has been published elsewhere, however I retain the rights.

A work bell pushed a peal and she

She ran fourteen blocks onward home

Home where they agreed to meet

Meat and candied beets, repast’s entity

Hurried home where she longed for him

Long foreign doorbell hummed at eight-oh-ten

(ate meat and candied beets)

He came nodding with his sly fox style

Smile, but do not touch her amber hair

Her hair not done and those are hot rollers

Hot, rolled her onto the stair

A wolf feasted on meat and candied beets

Eight weeks later he took his leave

Leaves and grass and hands gather round

Rounded belly thrum and beats

Beets, sugared, and warm meet

###

Lament for a Recorded Affair
*This piece was purchased and has been published elsewhere, however I retain the rights.

For you it was one lifetime about such lifetimes
You were motivated by what people term “soul mates”
Something you didn’t have with Joanna, but then
It’s rare, this connection, you went on and
Your new young lady horded it in the moment
Payment tossed to her by means of a line

She laced a little book to record these matters
An advisor inside told her that lifetimes expire quickly
Rotton-sweet words and body motion sink into memory
The book filled up inkwise, and when she closed it
You had gone elsewhere to think and so never called

It’s been near a decade and she recalls
Little snatches of the cloak-and-dagger meetings
Naturally your hair had foxy grey character then
(Twenty years old and she thought it charming)
But you loved your good reputation and so would never leave

Let me into your reputation, she plead, but you wanted
Darkness and legs moving and a mouth anew meeting yours
She gave her mouth and legs and what dark places she had
After this you went home to Joanna and read, forgetting

Well, there was the diary but she lost track of it
We figured it all got recorded in her bones

###

A paralysis sets in, and she is the force that caused it. The most clawing time she can remember, hands bloodied as they claw against the coarse granite of the slopes around her. She cannot get a handhold, she cannot stop the falling, either.

She fell down a flight of stairs, and she took too many painkillers for the bruising. In that woozy place between pain and intoxication, she decided to try passion. To try spontaneity.

She cannot get a handhold.

###

The winter presses up its face against the window, and even with the thermostat set to 78 degrees, I can’t pretend its not there. Seeping in through the ducts, fissure cracks, and musty screens that should have been replaced years ago.

I wish I could write better. I wish I could be Ellen Gilchrist for a day, writing about dreams and sad old actresses, about people trying to impress one another with how sane they are. I wish I could write.

That wasn’t her type of thing and that certainly wasn’t her type of person. New Year’s Resolution #14: Listen to her instincts.