The Saloon I

The Saloon I

We all came from somewhere,
most of us from sticky kitchens
where our Mothers ached a lifetime with spoons
and dust rags in their fingers.

Every time I come home,
even the cupboards are tired.

Her eyes were prairie green with big love,
an apron too small for any dustcan blood.
I opened the thing on the edge of the counter and
set it down right before her,
but she was too tired to make us dinner
because the light was dark
so I told to Mama, I don't
believe in God but I will for you

It takes a good mother to tell us we
don't have to fear God,
and in this way goodbye is just goodbye.

I left for the border, ended up
in the South. I was tired and I was
thirsty and my heart
felt like a brack.

The only two of us in this place know we're still
two babies in a sunlit cradle,
grabbing at the firewater air somewhere
on the edge of a graveyard
at the fourth corner of a loud desert.

There are so many old dead places I bet
Mama won't know where to run when
the devil finally comes to take her
to his big bucket of blood.

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BIO: Lisa Marie Basile is a writer and editor living in NYC. Her full-length poetry collection will come out in 2012 by Červená Barva Press. She is Editor-in-Chief of Caper Literary Journal, a monthly poetry and prose journal. She is an MFA student at The New School

She has published or upcoming work in Poets & Artists Magazine, The Moon Milk Review, CommonLine, Aphros Literary Magazine, Vox Poetica, The Medulla Review, Melusine, Physiognomy in Letters, Feile-Festa and The Broome Street Review among others.

Her site is: www.lisamariebasile.com